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Striving for zero infections from untraceable cases

Since the launch of the Universal Community Testing Programme (the Programme) on September 1, so far more than 1.6 million citizens have their specimens collected for testing. My thanks goes to all the participating citizens, as well as the medical and working staff assisting in the specimens collection at community testing centres. Following my visit to the centre at the Hong Kong Science Park to give encouragement to colleagues working for the Programme, few days ago I went to the Fire Eye Laboratory at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Centre and expressed my gratitude to the staff working there. Specimens collected at the community testing centres are all transferred to and tested in those 16 temporary air-inflated film chambers in the laboratory. In terms of daily testing capacity of individual chambers, the laboratory has the highest nucleic acid testing capacity in the world. Yet even with the best hardware, the large-scale Programme could not have carried out successfully without manpower support. On this, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the testing personnel from the Mainland, and support staff providing assistance in the collection of specimens at community testing centres, and others contributing their part in the whole process. Through the concerted efforts of everyone, we could bring the epidemic under control by identifying asymptomatic COVID-19 patients in the community, which in turn help create favourable conditions for the resumption of daily and economic activities.

Few days ago I went to the Fire Eye Laboratory at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Centre and expressed my gratitude to the staff working there.

As the epidemic has gradually subsided, some of the social distancing measures and operation restrictions on selected premises have just been further relaxed last Friday, including raising the restaurant seating cap from 2 to 4 per table. Over the last two days, many restaurants have seen a noticeable improvement in business. The epidemic over the past half year has indeed dealt a severe blow to restaurants and shops. We all wish that the epidemic could be tamed as early as possible, so that people’s daily activities and travel could be resumed and enterprises could have their business improved. Although the number of daily confirmed cases has recently remained at a low level, quite some of them are cases which could not traced to a known source. The objective of the the Programme is therefore to identify asymptomatic patients with a view to breaking the chains of infection in the community, which is indeed crucial in ensuring the confidence of people and enterprises in resuming their daily routine and operation. I would like to appeal again to the citizens who have not yet taken the tests to do so by visiting a community testing centre by Monday, joining us in fighting against the virus.

As an international city, it is not possible for us to cut the flow of people and cargo between Hong Kong and other places. Nonetheless, given the highly contagious nature of the COVID-19 virus, we need to strive for eliminating cases with untraceable source and identifying asymptomatic patients in the community. Together with other effective measures for the prevention and identification of imported cases, we could create space for the resumption of daily lives, economic activities and people’s travel, helping people and enterprises to regain confidence in future. It is even more important for us to set up a contingency mechanism for handling resurgence or small scale outbreak, so that the community can react and gear up quickly when needed to carry out large-scale testing and case tracing, with a view to containing the impact of any outbreak. Only by doing so, we could equip ourselves with the capabilities for handling resurgence and the possible winter outbreak proactively.

Learning from the experience in the past months, we understand that under the new normal of coexisting with the virus, many preventive measures may become routine arrangement. However, resurgence and outbreak should not become another routine. . Effective control of the epidemic is the key to support the economy and maintain confidence. This also has an impact on people’s desire for travel and consumption, as well as the confidence of restaurants, shops and enterprises in business outlook. Among major economies around the world, the Mainland has achieved a remarkable result in both controlling the epidemic and supporting the economy. If Hong Kong could bring the epidemic under control and eliminate untraceable cases, we could ride on the testing capacity enhanced in the Programme to expedite the launch of the “health code”, with a view to relaxing the travel restrictions on people flow between Hong Kong and the Mainland, as well as other places. This could give a boost to our economic recovery, benefit workers of different sectors, facilitate the reunion of families, and allow some travel.

Controlling the epidemic and restarting the economy are the most imminent tasks for us, as well as other places around the world. The Programme has enhanced our capability in conducting large-scale testing, and allowed us to gain useful experiences in the workflow of and coordination in specimens collection, logistics and testing arrangement. In addition, the society now has a deeper understanding on how a universal testing scheme actually works. If we could learn from the useful experience in operating the Programme, and turn those laboratory facilities with enhanced testing capacity into our general provision in our anti-epidemic works, we will have the ability to contain small scale outbreaks swiftly. Only by doing so, we would be able to pursue the dual-target of controlling the epidemic and supporting the economy, and rebuild hope of people and enterprises for the future.

September 13, 2020