Via the South China Morning Post: Hong Kong needs citywide coronavirus testing, China’s ‘Sars hero’ Zhong Nanshan says. Excerpt:
China’s top respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan has urged the Hong Kong government to carry out citywide Covid-19 testing to contain its third wave of local infections.
Hong Kong registered a triple-digit rise in Covid-19 cases for the eighth day running on Wednesday, pushing its total infections over 3,000 since its first coronavirus outbreak in late January.
The city’s authorities are battling to manage the burden on local hospitals as a result of the surge and are facing the additional challenge that the origin of more than half of daily infections have been untraceable since mid-July.
“My understanding is that Hong Kong people are now being tested on a voluntary basis,” Zhong said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV. “But I think if the situation goes on like this, everyone should be made to do the test.”
The Guangzhou-based “Sars hero” also said Hong Kong’s ban on dine-in services, which took effect this week, was a crucial step to contain the outbreak. Other stringent measures introduced in the city include mandatory mask wearing in public.
While the increase in cases was concerning, they were not yet growing at an exponential rate, he said. “Hong Kong’s problem was never on the medical aspect, but on containment.”
Zhong said the mainland’s experience showed strict lockdown policies had been very successful. “The mainland would have adopted even stronger measures. But Hong Kong has its own conditions, it has too little space, population density is too high, adopting the same strict measures would cause an impact on economic development and all other areas.
“So the way out is to increase testing and discover the asymptomatic patients,” he said.
