Mandatory Tests For Buildings With 4 Unlinked Cases

Health officials said on Thursday that they are planning to impose mandatory coronavirus testing on residents if their buildings report four or more unlinked cases.

This comes as a resident of Block 6 of Richland Gardens in Kowloon Bay tested preliminary positive for Covid-19, following seven confirmed cases there.

All of the patients live in unit D.

People who live in unit D at the block are to be sent to a quarantine centres as experts suspect the virus might have spread through the building's sewage pipes.

Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection said officials are planning to order mandatory testing for residents at a building if four unlinked cases are reported, but she said the threshold may change depending on the overall coronavirus situation in Hong Kong.

“Actually it is not scientific. It’s based on the risk assessment. If we don’t have any case in Hong Kong, maybe we can do compulsory testing for any one case for any one building," she said.

"But currently, we have cases everywhere in many blocks. So the chance of having three or four cases in one building is higher than before. But we feel that having four cases in one building may signify something. But when the situation becomes more severe, maybe the threshold will change."

Chuang added that it might not be safe to lock down residents of Block 6 of Richland Gardens if the virus is being transmitted there because of environmental factors.

She reiterated that officials hope to test all the residents of Block 6 to assess the situation first.

Authorities on Thursday reported 112 new coronavirus cases.

They said various clusters continued to expand. Seven more workers at a construction site for the Tseung Kwan O-Lam Tin Tunnel have come down with the disease, taking the total number of people affected there to eight.

A cluster linked to a construction site at Lohas Park in Tseung Kwan O reported five more cases, raising the total to almost 60.

Five more cases are reported at the YATA department store in Sha Tin. So far, 10 staff members there have been confirmed with the disease.

The largest ever cluster, involving people who attended dance gatherings, saw six more cases. More than 700 patients have been linked to this cluster.

Thirty-four of the 102 new local cases cannot be traced.

And more than 50 other people have tested preliminary positive for the virus.