HK imposing compulsory testing
Print Edition
Hong Kong will require air travelers from the United States and Europe to have coronavirus tests on arrival, and aims at expanding the arrangement in the near future to cover all those arriving from overseas, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s secretary for food and health said yesterday.
Since last Thursday, inbound travelers arriving on flights from Britain have been required to proceed to the Temporary Specimen Collection Center set up by the Department of Health at the AsiaWorld-Expo near the Hong Kong International Airport to give deep throat saliva samples and wait for results.
Upon the assessment that among the imported cases confirmed in Hong Kong, most of the patients have been to Britain, followed by the United States and European countries, the arrangement will be expand from today to all inbound travelers arriving on flights from the United States and Europe.
Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said the HKSAR government has required all the travelers arriving from overseas have deep throat saliva samples collected for tests, and those arriving from high-risk areas such as Britain, the United States and other European countries must wait at the specimen collection center for their test results before leaving.
If tested positive, they will be arranged for admission to hospital as soon as possible for treatment, while the close contacts who traveled with them will be sent to designated quarantine centers.
Those who test negative can go home or to a designated place for a 14-day compulsory quarantine.
The HKSAR government’s immediate objective is to extend the arrangement to all inbound travelers covered by the Compulsory Quarantine of Persons Arriving at Hong Kong from Foreign Places Regulation, which took effect on March 19, Chan said.
Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection yesterday reported four additional confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 1,004.
The four new cases involve two women and two men aged between 20 and 63, said head of the CHP’s Communicable Disease Branch Chuang Shuk-kwan.
Three had travelled during the incubation period, including a 56-year-old man returning from the United States who is asymptomatic but tested positive for the virus, a 20-year-old man who was studying in Britain and developed a headache after returning to Hong Kong, and a 21-year-old woman who was studying in Canada and developed fever in a quarantine center in Hong Kong.
The only patient without travel history, a 63-year-old woman, is the close contact of a previously diagnosed patient,.
It is the first time in weeks Hong Kong reported a single-digit increase in the number of cases in 24 hours.
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