Pharmacy Workers, Students Among New Covid Cases

A pharmacy worker, a Baptist University student and a disabled care home resident were the latest Covid-19 patients in Hong Kong whose sources of infection are not known, and the emergence of more clusters around town has fuelled further concerns about the local outbreak.

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) confirmed 11 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday. Nine were local cases and two were imported ones.

The CHP's Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan said one of the three local cases with no known source was a 57-year-old man who lives in a care home for disabled people on Shek Yam Road in Kwai Chung known as Home of Treasure. Two other residents have tested preliminary positive.

Chuang said that the requirement to wear a face mask was not strictly enforced there, and residents were free to walk around.

She said that more than 30 residents and about six members of staff have been sent to quarantine centres.

Chuang said she expected more cases to emerge there, but stopped short of saying an outbreak has erupted.

Another patient works in a pharmacy on Soy Street in Mong Kok, who infected two of his friends who work at two different pharmacies – on Sai Yeung Choi Street and Argyle Street – in the same area.

Health authorities said the three had gone to the others' shops to chat. Chuang said some of them also had massages in Yau Tong and Kowloon City.

The CHP will also offer tests to people who shared the same classroom as the Baptist University student who tested positive.

The university's student union confirmed that a second-year Applied Biology student had caught the virus. It said the Department of Biology said the student in question was on campus from September 28 to 30, and that some facilities in a number of buildings on campus have been temporarily shut for disinfection.

Chuang said that because the BU campus is quite big, chances of the virus spreading were not high. She said staff and students were unlikely to be in close contact with one another, unlike in primary or secondary schools.

The student's 17-year-old brother, who studies at the Carmel Divine Grace Foundation Secondary School in Tseung Kwan O, also caught the virus, and specimen bottles will also be sent to staff and students there.

Of the newly-confirmed cases linked to previous clusters are two people who lived in Holly Mansion with a Thai person who was confirmed to have contracted the virus earlier this week, and another customer at the China Secret bar in Tsim Sha Tsui at the centre of a recent cluster of cases.