Gov’t offers free Covid-19 tests to smoke out hidden cases 

People can now enjoy free nucleic acid test (NAT) services offered by the government as of yesterday, Tai Wa Hou, coordinator of the Health Bureau’s Covid-19 Vaccination Operation, who announced the new policy at the regular Covid-19 media briefing yesterday.
Tai emphasized that the complimentary service is intended to help those who believe they have been exposed to Covid-19 to take the NAT for early identification.
To prevent abuse of the service, the NAT results obtained from this mechanism will not be uploaded to the health code system, and cannot be used for the purposes of facilitating border crossing, he added.
If an individual does not receive a phone call from the government within six to eight hours of conducting the free NAT, this is likely to mean they tested negative.

More vaccines to arrive in Macau
In further good news for the public, a new batch of 200,000 Sinopharm inactivated vaccines was dispatched from Beijing yesterday morning. It is slated to arrive in Macau tomorrow. This means that Macau has now a sufficient supply of vaccines for the public, Tai reaffirmed.
Since the inoculation service resumed on August 8, following the three-day mass test conducted last week, Macau is now seeing around 5,000 people receiving a vaccination every day. However, the current daily rate is still “lower than expected.”
Tai urges the public to get vaccinated and help foster herd immunity within the community as soon as possible. He is aiming for an 80% vaccination rate in Macau, but added that this is not an easy task. Most vaccines in history have not achieved an 80% inoculation rate among the population.
Nonetheless, he stressed that this is a common goal that the entire world is working towards, as it is one of the ways that society will be able to resume normality.
“For sure, the higher the inoculation rate, the more robust the herd immunity will be,” Tai explained, suggesting that 80% is not necessarily the ultimate goal.

Mass test follow-up
The government has been unable to reach around 2,000 people who have not conducted the NAT, even following the conclusion of the mass test.
The authorities are now investigating the whereabouts of these people, speculating that some may hold dual nationalities and have already left Macau.
Among the 55 people who refused to take the test, 16 conducted the NAT on their own, whilst 39 have not taken the test as required.
Of these 39 people, the police force have identified 35 of them and are trying to contact four others. So far, there is only one person who remains reluctant to conduct the NAT, and has agreed to undergo a 14-day quarantine as an alternative to testing.
Tai said the government has no right to force any person to conduct the NAT.
Regarding the family of four who were infected with the Delta variant, all of them are in good health. The daughter and son have begun to regain their sense of smell, and the father’s fever is gone.

Gov’t reinstates 48-hour Covid-19 test for cross-border travelers

The government has relaxed the cross-border measures between Macau and Guangdong Province by increasing the validity period for negative Covid-19 test results back to 48 hours.
Coming into effect from 6 a.m. yesterday, the measure was announced by the government late on the night of August 9, after all samples tested negative during the citywide mass test.
The relaxation in cross-border measures offers great relief for bluecard holders residing in Guangdong, as it enables them to enter and leave Macau more readily.
In yesterday’s media briefing, Leong Iek Hou, coordinator at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that the government decided to reinstate the regulation after a discussion with mainland governments.
All parties agreed to provide more leeway for the cross-border regime, taking into consideration the fact that there have no further confirmed cases discovered from the mass test over the past seven days, aside from the family of four in Macau.
The less restrictive measures are intended to offer greater convenience to daily cross-border commuters.