Thousands In Yau Ma Tei, Jordan Ordered To Get Tests

Thousands of people living in old tenement buildings in Yau Ma Tei and Jordan are being ordered to undergo coronavirus testing, after a spate of Covid cases in the area.

Health Secretary Sophia Chan said that as of Friday afternoon, residents of 20 blocks in an area bordered by Nathan Road, Jordan Road, Kansu Street and Ferry Street were affected.

She said these people should go to a mobile testing station at Kwun Chung Sports Centre or testing vans in the area, between Saturday and Monday.

“The area is quite crowded and the hygiene condition is not so good. There are infection risks. So we’ve decided to expand the mandatory tests in a bid to cut off the transmission chain of the virus as quickly as possible and achieve zero infection in the area,” Chan explained.

Officers who can speak Nepalese, Urdu and other languages will visit the buildings in question and offer support for people from ethnic minority communities, she said.

Chan also encouraged other residents in the district, who are not covered by the mandatory testing order, to get tested as soon as possible.

Health authorities say more than 80 Covid infections have been recorded in the Yau Tsim Mong district in the past two weeks, with an outbreak involving more than 20 residents at an old tenement building on Reclamation Street.

Speaking on an RTHK programme earlier on Friday, Vincent Cheng from the DAB party said the authorities had been too slow to evacuate residents of the building when the first cases emerged.

Cheng said officials should consider public housing estates and old tenement buildings differently when carrying out mandatory testing.

"Currently, residents living in public housing buildings are required to undergo mandatory testing as soon as cases are reported from two different apartments. But there are hundreds of units in one public housing block... whereas there are only six or seven floors in an old tenement building. So I think the threshold for mandatory testing should be lowered there," he said.

Meanwhile, a former president of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, Vincent Ho, said misconnected drainage pipes at old tenement buildings are common, and "hazardous" as they can help the spread of the virus.

He inspected the exterior walls of the Covid-hit block on Reclamation Street and said he suspected that additional toilets have been retrofitted to subdivided flats there.

"I can notice that there are a lot of additional pipes extended and connected to a few more toilets. This would be a hazardous situation particularly when the pipes are not properly connected," he said.

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