(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) 351 new cases in Hong Kong hit a single-day high since the epidemic
China News Agency, Hong Kong, February 5 (Reporter Han Xingtong) The fifth wave of the epidemic in Hong Kong continues to be severe.
On February 5, Hong Kong reported 351 new positive cases of the new coronavirus, a single-day high since the outbreak.
Zhang Zhujun, director of the Infectious Diseases Division of the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, announced at a briefing on the epidemic that of the 351 new cases, 8 were imported cases, and the remaining 343 were local cases.
Most of the local cases involved the mutated virus strain Omicron, and another 24 were suspected to involve the mutated virus strain Delta.
The Secretary for Food and Health of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, Sophia Chan, also attended the press conference. In his opening speech, he pointed out that the local epidemic situation is very serious. The results of sewage monitoring show that the virus has spread in various districts in Hong Kong, and horizontal and vertical transmission has occurred in some residential buildings. Extremely worrying.
With the end of the Spring Festival holiday, new cluster infections caused by social contact, it is believed that the number of confirmed cases will increase exponentially in a short period of time.
She emphasized that the most important thing now is to significantly reduce the flow of people in the community and slow down the spread of the virus.
At the same time, Chen Zhaoshi announced a number of contingency plans, including converting the Penny's Bay Quarantine Center into a community isolation facility to receive asymptomatic or mildly ill people, which is expected to be launched next week.
The SAR government will also launch the anti-epidemic plan at the same time. In the first stage, the close contacts of the confirmed cases will be required to be quarantined at home. If the epidemic situation continues to deteriorate, close contacts will be considered and even those with asymptomatic or mild illness will be confirmed. home isolation.
In addition, Chen Zhaoshi revealed that the SAR government will greatly enhance the virus detection capacity, with the goal of an average daily testing volume of no less than 200,000.
In response to the fifth wave of the epidemic, the SAR government has distributed more than 600,000 sets of rapid test kits for the new coronavirus to residents in various districts through the Home Affairs Department. The procurement work is in progress. It is expected that there will be enough rapid test sets for the whole territory within this month. Citizens use it as a tool to assist nucleic acid testing to find out invisible infections in the community as soon as possible.
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