By The SUN
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| Secretary Lo says hotel quarantine may be shortened once testing and detection capacities are improved |
Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau has said more studies and
preparations are needed before
Speaking at his first daily Covid briefing since taking up the post as health chief on Jul 1, Prof Lo said the government will have to look at the data and assess the impact of lifting the flight suspension mechanism before deciding on whether to ease the quarantine rules.
Noting that 60% of all infected new arrivals are detected at the airport, and 95% overall are tested positive before the fifth day of quarantine, Lo said there is still a need to ensure that the rest of the imported infections are tracked even after the isolation period.
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
“We must be well prepared before we introduce changes to the current policy, but we are working very hard on this,” said Lo. “We are raising our PCR testing capacity and adopt technology to ensure that persons who leave their quarantine hotel can still be tracked when they return home.”
He pointed out that only 200 – or 2 percent - of every 10,000 inbound travelers test positive for Covid on arrival, so the aim now is to identify this small group more accurately so that the quarantine for the remaining 9,800 could be shortened.
By ending the flight bans, he said the government was not changing its strategy on preventing the importation of cases but was just implementing changes based on precise data.
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| Pindutin para sa detalye |
Lo also said that 100 flights were banned between January and June this year, with 534 passengers testing positive for Covid. With each flight that was grounded for five days, thousands of travelers were affected, he said.
“The social cost of the flight suspensions was very high,” he said.
Lo called on people not to let their guard down as the Centre for Health Protection reported 2,945 cases on Friday, slightly down from the more than 3,000 reported yesterday.
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All but 197 of the new cases were local infections.
He said the figure could double to 6,000 in two weeks based on previous trends if the government fails to test and isolate those who are infected to prevent them spreading the virus around.
"We will have to carry out more vigilant and more precise testing and more vigilant isolation for all those infected, using home isolation and specific isolation facilities to make sure that those infected are not walking around in our community and causing outbreaks,” he said.
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Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protections said the new cases took the caseload from the fifth wave to 1,252,436.
Three new Covid-related deaths were reported, involving two men and one woman aged between 64 and 85 years old, all with chronic diseases. Their deaths took the overall tally to 9,196.
Of the 197 imported cases, 74 were detected at the airport,
including 63 from the
Eleven new cases involving the BA.4 or BA.5 Omicron sub-variants were found, along with 20 additional cases of the BA.2.12.1 sub-variant.
The new local cases included 214 reported by 191 schools; as well as three from elderly homes and two from care centers.
The total number of patients admitted in public hospitals now stands at 852. Among them 14 are in critical condition, including three in intensive care, while 18 are in serious condition.
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| PADALA NA! |
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