'No Need To Worry Over Increase In Covid Indicator'

Medical expert Lau Yu-lung on Tuesday said there was no need to worry about a Covid indicator that had tripled, saying that did not point to a significant increase in infection risks.

The "real-time effective reproduction number" – or R number – was mostly below 1 in March before jumping to 3.6 in early April. The figure eased to 2.8 last week.

The University of Hong Kong academic and government Covid adviser said the daily tally has edged up as society returns to normality, but there was no need to worry as most people who caught the virus again showed no or mild symptoms.

"Recently people are a bit more relaxed, there are more people travelling to and out of Hong Kong, so there are naturally more infections," he told an RTHK programme.

But Lau said the Covid caseload will "definitely" not return to levels seen during the peak of the fifth wave last year.

The expert added people should look at the number of serious cases, instead of how many people got Covid.

"How many people are admitted to hospital daily because of Covid, or that coupled with their own chronic illnesses? There aren't many – a few dozens, out of seven million people in Hong Kong. And only a few of the few dozen patients are serious cases. The number of deaths because of Covid was zero or one every day in the past two weeks," he said.