Kwai Chung Estate residents decry lockdown as expert calls for further extension to 14 days

A resident of a Kwai Chung block placed under lockdown said people were desperate seeing the five-day lockdown getting extended, saying they were fighting the epidemic with their backs to the wall.

Speaking on a radio program on Wednesday, a resident staying at Yat Kwai House of Kwai Chung Estate said he worried the lockdown extension could turn the building into a “cage fight”, increasing their risk of infection.

Health officials earlier announced that the block’s five-day lockdown will be extended for another two days until Friday.

The resident said some others have discovered that the elevators within the building were not disinfected after health officials used them to transport suspected Covid patients.

“Residents were able to use the same elevator within a minute,” he said, which would increase the risk of cross-infection.

A Kwai Tsing community group interviewed around 200 Kwai Chung Estate residents, where the residents said they hope authorities could arrange door-to-door Covid testing, citing the bad sanitary conditions in the building.

The group also said residents were worried unvaccinated children might get infected while queuing up to get their Covid tests.

Meanwhile, respiratory expert Leung Chi-chiu said residents living in Yat Kwai House - where more than 210 cases were detected - should be locked down for 14 days.

Leung said residents of the block were at higher risk of infection given the proportion of cases found was higher than in other buildings in the housing estate.

“If daily confirmed cases remain at around 20, it could mean there is still transmission within the building,” he said.

The health expert added there is a need for residents there to undergo a total of 14 days of quarantine and another seven days of self-monitoring to stop carriers from spreading the coronavirus during their incubation period.

He also called on companies to allow their staff to work from home, in view of the untraceable Covid cases spreading to different parts of the city.