By Daisy CL Mandap
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| Congen Tejada says HK is able to effectively screen out variant carriers |
Consul General Raly Tejada has said that Hong Kong has enough safeguards in place to ensure the highly infectious coronavirus variants do not spread in the community, including those brought in by foreign domestic workers from the Philippines.
“Apart from the rather lengthy 21-day mandatory (hotel)
quarantine, I believe the current law governing the deployment of Filipino
workers to the territory is adequate for now,” said ConGen Tejada.
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He was responding to articles in local media calling
on the government to study the recent surge in the number of travelers from the
Philippines coming in not only with the coronavirus, but also with the mutated
strain, said to be 70 times more infectious.
Among those who urged for a study of data of travelers
from the Philippines was Dr Ho Pak-leung, head of the Infectious Diseases
Centre of the University of Hong Kong.
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Ho said in interviews on Apr 2 that the number of
imported cases in the previous 10 days was high, and they were mostly travelers
from the Philippines and Indonesia.
On that day, six of the 13 confirmed Covid-19 cases recorded in Hong Kong were FDHs from the Philippines, and they all carried the N501Y variant. Two were Indonesian DHs, but they did not have the variant.
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Ho noted that there had been a serious rebound in
cases in the Philippines, and the government should review the percentage of
recent arrivals from the country who had tested positive and were found to
carry the variant.
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He also pointed out that despite having negative test certificates prior to boarding their flights, many of the passengers from the Philippines still tested positive on arrival in Hong Kong.
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He said this showed that either the epidemic situation
in the Philippines is serious, or the tests carried out are inaccurate.
If the number of infections with the variant continues
to increase, he said the government should consider suspending flights from the
Philippines, for the same reason it banned flights from the United Kingdom when
the mutated virus was first reported from there.
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| Ho says HK should consider suspending flights from PHL |
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But when asked the same question during a news
briefing that day, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch
of the Centre for Health Protection, said, “There are other factors to
consider.”
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| Tunghayan ang isa na namang kwentong |
Chuang pointed out that there are enough restrictions in place to avert the possible spread of the variant, including the stringent 21-day quarantine and the negative test result required of travelers from high risk countries.
She also said the much-feared variant has not been seen in
any local case.
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