The Covid-19 tested trucks in an enclosed area in Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels district on March 13th.
Photographer: Justin Chin / Bloomberg
Photographer: Justin Chin / Bloomberg
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Hong Kong completed coronavirus testing in four enclosed buildings in the heart of an exclusive residential area, popular with expats, making it one of its most dramatic steps yet not to contain a widespread event that began in a gym.
Authorities cordoned off two towers each at the Robinson Place and Blessings Garden residential complexes in the exclusive Mid-Levels neighborhood on Saturday. As of 2 a.m. Sunday, 1,855 residents had been tested in the buildings and no confirmed cases of Covid-19 were found, the government said in a statement. statement. The screening was completed at nine in the morning and the application operation was completed around 11 in the morning
Vans and police officers arrived Saturday evening to seal the area around the buildings with red tape and metal barricades. Nearly a dozen makeshift tents lined the sidewalk as government workers with protective equipment began installing specimen collection stations.
Sunday, the government announced that more jobs, schools and residential buildings were subject to mandatory test orders. The updated list includes office housing UBS Group, Chanel Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. i Standard Chartered Plc.
Screening will also be required at six schools and universities, including Kellett Bay’s Kowloon Bay campus, the Pok Fu Lam branch closed last week, as well as more than a dozen residential buildings in the central area of Sai Ying Pun, where wastewater is displayed. has been positive for the virus.
The latest government measures marked the escalation of a days-long campaign that has already resulted in hundreds of people sent to quarantine camps, dozens of offices ordered for mandatory employee testing and several more expensive schools in Hong Kong. Kong who stopped face-to-face classes. Although the city had larger outbreaks, no outbreaks have come so close to many expatriates in the city since the pandemic began.
The number of confirmed cases related to the outbreak rose to 99 after the first case was reported on Wednesday.
Several banks advised staff last week not to enter offices. HSBC Holdings Plc left a floor of its main building on Thursday after an employee gave a preliminary positive, according to a note to staff. UBS Group AG told some staff members to work from home after an employee tested positive, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. returned to the policy of 50% of the staff working from home.
The outbreak also affected law firms, with Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith Freehills closing their offices after employees tested positive. Clifford Chance asked staff to work remotely with “great caution.”
Hong Kong, which has one of the strictest quarantine regimes in the world, requires all those who have had close contact with infected people mandatory isolation for a period Until two weeks. More than 300 people have been sent to quarantine in the latest outbreak, which began with a trainer at Ursus Fitness at Sai Ying Pun, a popular gym among Western expats.
On Saturday, health workers clarified that there would be mandatory Covid testing for an eight- and nine-year-old group at an international school after their teacher tested positive for the virus. Some will need to be in quarantine with a parent or caregiver. It was said that a previous directive ordered all children to be quarantined.
– With the assistance of Rishaad Salamat
(Updates with government statements on blockade, mandatory tests from the second paragraph.)