More Restrictive Measures to Tame Covid-19

Secretary for Health Chan announcing more measures today

 

The Hong Kong government is still trying to tame the coronavirus pandemic, and fearing the fourth wave coming, it has mandated some new regulations this afternoon.

From midnight tonight, people considered in "high risk" jobs will be forced to undergo Covid-19 tests. These probably include those in the hospitality industry, bus and taxi drivers, and healthcare workers. If they refuse to take the test they could face six months in prison and fines up to HK$25,000.

Mandatory testing for "high risk" groups

Pretty hefty, but the government believes there are still silent carriers out there.

Shockingly there are cases of people visiting friends who are in quarantine. Hello? You can't do that! Why is this happening now after how many months? 

When someone is in quarantine that means they shouldn't see anyone for 14 days! If the quarantined person needs something, then drop it off at the door, no face-to face visits please.

And then there are the parties in hotel rooms. The government is now clamping down to a maximum of four people per hotel room, and all guests must be registered with the hotel. Again why is this happening? 

People seem to think they can be more carefree in hotel rooms. The other reason is hotels are trying to drum up business by creating packages for birthday parties, and some of these events have gotten out of hand, leaving outrageous destruction behind, and now cases of infections. This has to stop in the name of social-distancing.

Restaurants four to a table, 50 percent capacity

Starting Monday restaurants have to go back to tables of four, and bars and pubs with tables of two, open until midnight, whereas it is now it is 2am. Also the capacity of these places, including swimming pools will be cut from 75 percent to 50 percent.

Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of University of Hong Kong's medical school and advisor to the government on the pandemic, said the recent situation is worrying.

"In the recent one to two weeks, we have seen much more imported infections compared to the past. This trend was also similarly seen before the outbreak of the third wave," he said.

He added that analysis of the virus strain in recent patients showed it was linked to earlier imported cases from Nepal, suggesting loopholes in measures regarding arrivals.

Dr Leung says latest virus strain is from Nepal

Leung said the local reproductive number of the coronavirus, a figure showing the amount of people a patient could infect is between one and 1.25 people in the past two weeks.

"It means the risk of an outbreak is very high," he said. "Hopefully those hidden transmissions could be traced and they would not join and cause large outbreaks."

And here I thought most Hongkongers were pretty good in observing social distancing, but I guess not! It's disappointing to find people are not erring on the side of caution -- we need to beat this virus, the sooner the better.