'Ticketing System Not Cutting Testing Centre Queues'

A contractor running a Covid-19 testing centre said on Friday that the new ticket-distributing system had failed to shorten queues as more people are being subject to compulsory testing orders.

Chris Wong from the Hong Kong Molecular Pathology Diagnostic Centre was commenting after the government installed another 10 ticket-dispensing machines across the city on Friday.

People under testing order who get a ticket from one of the machines, can check the real-time status of queues at several community testing facilities on the mobile app, THE GULU, which also provides similar services for restaurant bookings.

Wong told an RTHK programme that the machines did not make much of a difference, as there were still long queues at some centres.

“For a testing centre that has five booths and gives out tickets, if there are too many people they still have to queue. And we can't only take people with queuing tickets at all five specimen collection booths and not allow any walk-ins, because the number of walk-ins is 10 times more than that with queuing tickets," he said.

"At the same time, like restaurant bookings, some might not show up after getting a ticket, which is another drawback."

Wong added it would be difficult to hand out all daily quotas through the electronic ticketing queuing system, because some elderly people might not have a mobile phone to use the function.