By The SUN
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| Yuen says the variant has already spread in the community so urgent action is needed |
Government health experts say the Indian returnee from
Dubai who lived in Jordan after ending his 21-day quarantine must have spread
the coronavirus variant to a Filipina domestic helper in Tung Chung, who was
found infected on Friday.
Microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung from the University of
Hong Kong and David Hui from Chinese University, both said Saturday, May 1,
that researchers showed the two patients carried an identical genomic sequence
of the variant first found in South Africa.
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Yuen said in an interview on RTHK that this meant that
the variant strain which is believed to be more infectious, has already spread
in the community, and that urgent action is needed to stop it.
Hui, citing findings made by Polytechnic University
researchers, said it was likely the Indian man who moved around Hong Kong after
ending his 21-day hotel quarantine in Tsim Sha Tsui had sparked off a silent
transmission in the community.
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“He mainly infected his friends in Jordan and indirectly he probably infected the foreign domestic helper,” he said.
Hui said stepping up testing is the best way to avert
the further spread of the mutated virus.
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But Yuen was more concerned, saying the government should conduct antibody tests on those who recently left quarantine hotels, as there were indications that the virus had spread in at least two Ramada hotels.
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Ramada Grand in Tsim Sha Tsui was where the Dubai
returnee had spent his quarantine, while Ramada Harbour View in Sai Ying Pun
was where a Filipina domestic worker who also tested positive for the South
African variant after quarantine, had stayed.
Yuen said the variant could have spread either at the
airport or the quarantine hotels, or problems with sampling and testing
procedures had led to false negative findings.
He urged for random retesting of samples from recent
arrivals from abroad, and field auditing for private laboratories.
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| Hui says mass testing should be stepped up, but Yuen says contact tracing is key |
For him, mass testing, as was recently required for
all of Hong Kong’s 370,000 FDHs, cannot replace painstaking contact tracing
work to discover how the virus transmission started.
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Meanwhile, eight new Covid-19 cases were reported
Saturday, all of them recent arrivals from overseas who had tested positive while in
hotel quarantine.
Half came from Indonesia, two from India, and one each
from the Philippines and Cambodia.
The additional cases brought Hong Kong’s total tally
to 11,782.
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Another Covid-related death was reported on the same
day, bringing the total number of fatalities from the disease to 203.
The 70-year-old female patient was admitted to Tuen
Mun hospital on Apr 6 after a fall, and was confirmed infected during the
admission screening. Her condition deteriorated while in isolation, and she passed
away at 1:48pm on Saturday.
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