Authorities announce three new rounds of mass testing this week

Macau will see three new consecutive rounds of citywide mass testing this week, starting from today and ending Saturday, local health authorities announced yesterday in the return of the daily press briefing on the Covid-19 situation by the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center.

In a crowded press briefing with a total of 11 government representatives present, including two secretaries from the government and four bureau directors, it was the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Elsie Ao leong, who announced that a triple round of mass testing for the whole population will commence as soon as this morning.

Complementing the information presented by Ao Ieong, the director of the Health Bureau (SSM), Alvis Lo, said that the three rounds will take place over six days (from Monday to Saturday), with two days designated for each round.

Lo also said that the authorities implemented this intensive mass testing plan after the authorities found a total of 90 new positive cases, of which two-thirds (60) were found in the community and only one-third were cases detected in areas of control and confinement. This figure raised this outbreak’s tally of positive cases to a total of 784. From these, only 317 are symptomatic, while the majority (467 cases) are asymptomatic.

The SSM director said that the goal is to find all the cases that are concealed within the community and that are causing the never-ending spread of the virus, noting that Macau is following China’s national policy of “Covid-19 zero-case.”

The most significant difference between these three rounds and all the previous rounds is that children aged up to three years old (on July 1, 2022) are exempt from taking part in the mass testing, while all other citizens must take part in the testing.

Ao Ieong also announced that a total of 650 workers from the health authorities of the city of Zhuhai as well as Guangdong province will take part in these rounds of nucleic acid testing (NAT) by helping with sampling collection stations.

“From these, 150 have already arrived at Macau and the other 500 will be arriving soon,” she added.

The Secretary also called on all activity sectors to suspend or reduce their operations over this week to a minimum to facilitate the process and avoid cross-infection in the community, calling on all citizens to avoid leaving their homes unless strictly necessary.  Examples of acceptable reasons include supplying their homes with necessities or going to get a NAT.

Additionally, and as happened in the last round, the authorities are requesting all citizens take a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) and ensure that the result is negative before going to a NAT sampling station.

“This week is very crucial, and I make this appeal to all citizens to continue to support the government in this task and to adhere to the rules. Please do not go to the NAT outside the booking time. We want to avoid crowd gathering at all costs,” Ao Ieong implored.

In response to the questions from the media, Lo justified the need for the intensive rounds of NAT as well as for a complementary measure of daily RAT for everyone by referencing the “the fast propagation of the virus. If we don’t have this constant testing, when we detect one case, we probably already have a large number of other cases infected. As we know, this virus has high transmissibility, and each infected person can infect another seven.”

NAT and RAT for a week

The director of the Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ), Kong Chi Meng, has further explained that during the triple round of the citywide NAT, there will be a total of 64 sampling collection stations, 44 of which are for the general public, 13 for paid NAT and seven dedicated to testing only people with special needs. While for the general public the NAT takes place from 9 a.m. on the first day till 6 p.m. on the following day (a total of 33 hours), the priority lanes of the sampling stations will open three hours earlier, catering to people with special needs from 6 a.m.

Kong also reminded us that while children below the age of three are exempt from the NAT mass testing, this does not apply to the RAT, to be done at home, nor does it apply to those who are under control measures (Yellow Health Code). In those cases, there is no exemption based on age.

The NAT mobile stations will also be part of the mass testing, with several vehicles to be placed in different areas of the Peninsula and Islands (the precise location to be disclosed at a later stage).

During the three rounds, citizens will receive some prevention and control supplies from the government, such as five RAT kits in the first round (starting today), 10 pieces of KN95 face masks in the second round (starting Wednesday), and another five RAT kits on the round that starts on Friday. Citizens should use upload the results returned by these kits to the respective platform until at least Saturday (July 9).