The authorities of Hong Kong “prepare plans” to subject the city’s 7.5 million inhabitants to a mandatory screening test for the COVID-19the chief executive of the territory, Carrie Lam, announced on Friday.
“One of the measures that we are preparing, and that we are preparing very seriously, is a mandatory universal test,” Lam said at a news conference, speaking of a “critical situation” in the city.
After registering just over 12,000 cases of COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic at the cost of draconian isolation, Hong Kong is currently facing an exponential progression of the virus linked to the highly contagious omicron variant.
More than 11,000 new cases were recorded on Friday alone, after 12,000 on Thursday, and the hospital system was completely overwhelmed in a matter of days.
Mass testing of the population is routinely practiced in mainland China, whose authorities observe a “zero COVID” policy that sometimes leads them to lock down entire cities for weeks.
However, Lam ruled out the possibility of confining Hong Konga measure that is difficult to apply in a city whose population density is one of the highest in the world and where housing is often meager and shared.
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Source: Gestion
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