Tourism board has no data on budgeting for third-party inspectors

The Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) had no idea how much money had been used on third-party quarantine hotel inspectors and quarantine hotels, a representative from the tourism board admitted yesterday.

Being part of the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre, MGTO handles a variety of responsibilities, such as the communications between the government and hotel operators on matters related to quarantine hotels.

Lao Fong Chi, the representative from MGTO to the daily health press briefing, revealed yesterday that she did not have data on the budgeting for the two aforementioned services, or for the cost-to-date of the two services.

She attributed the ongoing operations of the services as the reason why she did not have the data available.

Last week, The Parisian hotel recorded an internal outbreak that was only disclosed by the government four days after the first infections were detected.

On Monday, MGTO revealed that in October last year, the government commissioned the Macau University of Science and Technology Hospital (UH) as a third-party consultant to inspect and investigate pandemic prevention measures.

UH subsequently issued a statement recently which noted that the inspections commissioned last October were not supposed to cover The Parisian hotel.

MGTO then clarified early yesterday that UH was only commissioned to inspect the Parisian after the internal outbreak.

When commenting on the matter, Lao reiterated that there were only four quarantine hotels in October 2021, which is why UH has only handled four hotels since then.

The tourism official stressed that UH offered recommendations on “reinforcement measures” with regards to infection prevention and control. “For example, they offered suggestions on what should be reinforced or improved,” Lao said.

In addition, she reiterated that the Health Bureau (SSM) inspects all hotels prior to their use as quarantine facilities to ensure the facilities and amenities fits the requirement of a quarantine hotel.

“Afterwards, SSM issues guidelines and offers training to the teams at the concerned hotel,” Lao further explained. “Therefore, we have commissioned a third-party entity to assist with reinforcement measures and inspections.”

She emphasized that all hotels that were used as quarantine facilities after the June 18 chain infections were deemed suitable for the mission by SSM. Teams have been trained and given guidelines on health and safety concerns.

Lao emphasized that the government wanted to expand the UH contact in terms of advice on reinforcement measures, but blamed the increase in the number of quarantine hotels and guests for slowing down the process.

However, she stated that there are chat groups for communication between the government and quarantine hotels, so issues could be followed up.

The third-party inspector, meanwhile, focused on reinforcement measures. “We have commissioned the third-party to inspect the Sheraton hotel as well,” Lao added.

On why the infections at The Parisian did not create a separate cluster, Leong Iek Hou, public health doctor at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the internal outbreak affected confined workers, implying a minor impact to the community.

However, an earlier report by local media Macao Daily News cited an interviewee as saying that July 12 – two days after the first Parisian internal chain infections were detected – about 500 people finished quarantine and checked out from the hotel.

An interviewee with the newspaper tested positive on July 15. Given the incubation period of the Omicron BA.5 variant is about three days, it is unclear if the virus spread from the hotel to the community.