Local authorities have no plans, for the time being, to reduce the border restrictions in place ahead of the National Day holiday “Golden Week,” which takes place in the first week of October.
Questioned on the topic, the acting division head for health promotion at Health Bureau (SSM), Valerie Wong said, “At this moment, we have no plan to reduce any restrictions,” adding that the situation in the neighboring cities, namely Zhuhai, is experiencing instability at present.
Wong had been questioned as to whether there was any plan to facilitate the entry of more visitors over the so-called “Golden Week of the National Day” as a means of boosting tourism and local economic recovery.
The same official also noted that, late last week, two groups of 10 people have been called on to repeat a nucleic acid test (NAT) after two positive results were returned from a 10-in-1 mixed sample.
According to the same official, the groups involved comprised people who had returned or arrived from abroad as well as from Hong Kong and Taiwan and had a history of trips to several locations. She also advanced that the individual tests done on those 20 people had all returned negative results, with the authorities thinking that it might have been caused by a false positive sample as several of those involved had just finished isolation periods and some were still in the self-health management period.
She could not provide details on the CT level found, but she said that the people were all retested on the grounds of the possibility of relapse from a previous infection, which was then ruled out.
No scope to
lower price of
individual NAT
Wong also said in response to a media inquiry that there is currently no scope to reduce the prices of the NAT done in individual sampling mode, for those people who have recently recovered from Covid-19. She explained that these NATs, as they are tested individually, “have a 10-fold increase in cost over the 10-in-1 mixed sample tests,” noting that the prices provided by the service suppliers (from 150 to 200 patacas) are according to the cost of the NAT.
Following such an exercise, the regular cost of a 10-in-1 NAT should be between 15 to 20 patacas each, while currently, the price of such a test type in Macau is still 45 patacas.
