Outbreak Mass testing finds nine groups of preliminary positives

The citywide mass testing for Covid-19 which commenced June 19 noontime and continuing until June 21 has found more preliminary positive infections, the director of the Health Bureau (SSM), Dr. Alvis Lo, said yesterday during a press briefing from the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center.

According to Lo, in addition to the previous six groups of tests that had tested preliminarily positive earlier, yesterday another three were found, raising the total to nine.

As Dr Lo explained, since the mass testing samples are tested in groups of 10 samples at one time to accelerate the process, there was a potential number between nine and 90 cases to be found among these samples.

He also mentioned that the procedure entailed calling all people whose samples tested positive to do another test, to confirm which of the samples contain the virus.

“From one of the sets, we already found that one of the samples was positive and the other nine have tested negative,” Lo said, referring to the samples collected on Sunday at the Kiang Wu Hospital.

He added that both cases 35 and 36, added yesterday, were found through the mass testing process.

He also said that at this point the authorities are still testing these other people to ascertain who is infected, but he noted that they were looking for a potential case where one contaminated sample caused a group of nine to test positive.

“We could confirm that there are others, but we have not concluded the process yet. We did a first analysis and put together some pieces of this puzzle and we are now starting to get a clear picture,” he said, noting that the main goal of the mass testing process is to triage people avoiding further infections.

He said that the reason the government has supplied three kits of Rapid Antigen Tests for each person participating in the citywide testing is to facilitate the process of finding other cases within the community.

“We can use those kits for different purposes. We hope that people can read the instructions and learn the procedure to do the self-test so in case we need them to do it, they have the knowledge,” Lo said, explaining that in cases of group samples testing positive, the government can request the individuals to do a self-test first and only if the self-test returns positive, are they called to do an individual test at the public hospital, saving time and resources.

Pleased with the rate of the turnout for the mass testing, which had reached about 67% of the population within the first 28 hours, Lo noted that he hopes the authorities can contain the Covid-19 spread quickly and effectively, avoiding a broad spread over the city.

“We are restricting the risk to the red zones, so we have a clear focus on which people to target and avoid a larger spread across the city,” he said.

The SSM director advised that people should assume a very defensive position and treat everyone in their surroundings as potentially infected, particularly when they go to have their test sample collected.

“It is very easy to get contaminated in a process like this if you don’t consider everyone else as possibly infected, and enforce maximum care,” he said.

According to the figures revealed, until 4 p.m. on Monday, a total of 459,687 people had already completed their tests, from which 269,628 had already been analyzed and returned negative.

Bookings and crowd 

gatherings still an issue

Addressing the difficulties experienced by many residents in finding an open slot to book a nucleic acid test, as well as the long lines that were seen in many of the sampling collection posts, Lo attributed it to a lack of respect to people in the system.

“We have verified that in some posts there are extreme peaks of demand times. This happens mostly because people are not respecting the booking time or even doing a pre-booking before heading to the posts. We have seen some unnecessary gatherings and longer waiting times because some people are hasty arriving too early to the posts. This causes unnecessary crowds that we did not wish to see.”

Remarking on the number of slots available and the difficulties of finding a booking, Lo said that the services try to adjust to the demand but that they cannot know in advance that a certain post will have a high demand at a given time.

“Slots also change according to staff and other things. We are adjusting according to need and bookings for each post but most important is for people to arrive at the scheduled time,” he reaffirmed.