HONG KONG • Hong Kong will extend social distancing measures for a further two weeks until after the Chinese New Year holiday and will impose stricter testing rules when cases of Covid-19 are detected.
The measures, which include a ban on more than two people gathering and dining in restaurants after 6pm, will remain in place until Feb 17.
"More time is going to be needed before we see a substantial improvement," Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung told a news briefing yesterday.
The move comes as mainland China has also introduced curbs for Chinese New Year to try to prevent further outbreaks.
The Hong Kong government has in the past week set up testing zones for residents of some areas with little warning.
It will also now require all residents of a building to get tested if a single untraceable infection is found in their building.
Hong Kong has been logging double-digit daily case numbers for several weeks, with 34 infections recorded yesterday, down from Sunday's 53. It has had around 10,500 Covid-19 cases since January last year and 181 deaths.
Mainland China reported the lowest daily increase in new Covid-19 cases in more than three weeks, official data showed yesterday, reversing a sharp uptick a day earlier, amid efforts to contain the disease ahead of the holiday period.
New confirmed reported cases more than halved to 42, the National Health Commission said in a statement, down from 92 a day earlier and marking the lowest one-day increase since 33 reported on Jan 8.
The national and local authorities are discouraging travel even as the number of new cases falls, underscoring their concerns about another flare-up as the country approaches the Chinese New Year holiday period, when hundreds of millions typically travel.
Meanwhile, a team led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) investigating the origins of the pandemic yesterday visited the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in China's central region of Hubei, where the outbreak emerged in late 2019.
The group of independent experts spent about 41/2 hours there, on its longest site visit to date, and did not speak to waiting journalists.
The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said its members would be limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and have no contact with community members, due to health curbs.
No full itinerary for the group's field work has been announced.
Dr Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, said two weeks in the field was not much time for the experts.
"I don't think they have the time to get any conclusive results. It is more like communication and information exchange," Dr Huang told Reuters by phone from Washington. "It depends how diligent they are in digging up new information, but also about how cooperative and accommodating the Chinese side will be."
REUTERS
