Current anti-Covid measures unchanged due to increasing cases: Health authority

The health authority announced today that the current anti-epidemic measures will not be reviewed yet, citing the potential risk of the increasing daily confirmed cases and predictable influenza in the coming winter.  

Hong Kong recorded 9,219 Covid patients on Thursday, marking the average number of cases in the past week that increased by about a quarter compared to the previous week.  

"We anticipated a further fluctuation of the daily confirmed cases will be brought by the recovery of social activities after the last round of relaxing of the social distancing measures in early November," according to Undersecretary for Health Libby Lee Ha-yun in a government press conference about the epidemic today.  

"The government will not be pleased to tighten the measures again, thus we have to confirm maintaining the disease prevention results we currently have to achieve our goal of 'soft landing,'" she said.  

The Amber Health Code system will not be revised currently, Lee added.  

However, Lee noted citizens should not be over-concerned if they receive full vaccination and wear masks.  

She also mentioned that the BioNTech bivalent vaccine will be available for citizens to get inoculated in early December, suggesting that people above 50 have their fourth jabs as the booster.  

"The bivalent will only be applied into use as the booster as an option for citizens to receive," Lee said, noting the vaccination rate for specific age groups is still not very optimistic.  

Around 60 percent of Hongkongers aged above 80 are triple-vaccinated, and 70 percent of children aged between 3-11 had two jabs; only 10 percent of babies younger than 2 had Covid jabs.