By The SUN
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| Residents at Yat Kwai House will be tested for three consecutive nights |
Health authorities
have ordered three consecutive overnight lockdowns on Yat Kwai House in Kwai
Chung Estate after 16 confirmed Covid-19 cases, likely with a new strain of the
Omicron variant, were detected in the building.
At an impromptu
press briefing late on Thursday, a team from the Centre for Health Protection
said the 16 confirmed cases were either confirmed positive or were preliminary
positive. Fifteen are residents and one is a security guard.
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The result of the genome
sequencing on the first two cases has revealed the presence of BA.2 sub-variant
of the Omicron, which is believed to be even more infectious than the original
variant.
Microbiologist Dr
Yuen Kwok-yung revealed that the infections were linked to a Pakistani
housewife who caught the coronavirus with the highly transmissible variant just
before leaving her quarantine hotel, then brought it home with her to Sham Shui
Po.
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| Pindutin para sa detalye |
It turned out her 46-year-old
husband who is not vaccinated and was in turn infected, had gone to the garbage
rooms at Kwai Chung Estate on Jan 13 to gather items he could sell at his hawker’s
spot on Nam Cheong Street in Sham Shui Po.
Yuen said the man
must have spent time choosing items in the trash collection point not only in
Yat Kwai House, but also at Luk Kwai House and Tsz Kwai House in the Kwai Chung
estate.
The virus is
believed to have been passed on to either the building’s cleaners or security
personnel, who went on to infect residents.
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| Pindutin para sa detalye |
He said the infected
residents live in 12 units on 11 floors, and the flats face different
directions. An inspection of the sewage pipes did not reveal any abnormality,
thus, it is not likely that vertical transmission had taken place.
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| Yuen on an inspection visit to the Kwai Chung estate |
Because of these
findings Yuen said it was not necessary to evacuate everyone but suggested that
the building be put under lockdown daily for the next three days. There are
also 2,500 people living in the building, so there would not be enough
quarantine places for all of them.
Under the daily
lockdown residents will be required to undergo testing every night and show a negative
test result on their mobile phones in the morning if they want to leave.
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However, Yuen
advised them not to leave their houses unless absolutely necessary to prevent a
further spread of the virus.
The first positive
case from the building was detected on Jan 16, when a 79-year-old man was
tested prior to undergoing a colonoscopy at Yan Chai Hospital.
Yesterday, two other infections were linked to the building. One was a 55-year-old male resident working as a forklift operator at Cathay Pacific’s cargo terminal site at Hong Kong airport, while the other is a year-old baby girl who visited her grandmother who lives in the building.
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