TVB cliffhanger after artist sent to isolation

Television Broadcasts Ltd artists and staff are jittery after celebrity Edwin Siu Ching-nam - who attended the station's 53rd anniversary celebration last week - was sent to quarantine.

Siu on Wednesday last week filmed a show at a restaurant, where a worker was subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19.

If Siu is found positive, it could be a disaster for TVB as he and more than 200 unmasked artists - including top names such as Liza Wang Ming-chuen and Natalis Chan Pak-cheung - attended the massive anniversary celebration the following day.

TVB issued an internal notice to employees yesterday saying Siu had been sent to quarantine and the 205 artists who attended the celebration had tested negative, adding the studios and backstage areas had also been disinfected.

Separately, worries of a potential brothel cluster was raised as a 35-year-old jobless, asymptomatic patient admitted he had visited a sex worker at King Hing building in Mong Kok on November 8.

Health officers and police were assigned to search the 14-story building at the junction of Fa Yuen Street and Argyle Street past midnight on Sunday but were unable to locate her, so they knocked on each door and asked sex workers to take a test.

But the Centre for Health Protection said the only Mong Kok building the man visited was Hollywood Plaza.

Online information showed that King Hing Building is filled with prostitutes and where some 200 subdivided flats spread across 12 floors are brothels.

In January 2018, police arrested 99 prostitutes from China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Belarus and Thailand.

The man was the first patient to admit using prostitutes. Last month, a 42-year-old sex worker arrested in a police antivice operation in a Mong Kok hotel was diagnosed with Covid-19, sparking fears of the disease spreading among customers who were unlikely to come forward for tests.

The mainland woman, who overstayed in Hong Kong, developed symptoms after being transferred to Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre and Ma Tau Kok Detention Centre.

Authorities yesterday announced 80 new cases - 39 males and 41 females, ranging from two months to 88 years old - taking the city's tally to 5,782, including 108 deaths.

Of the fresh cases 11 were imported, 59 linked to previous infections and 10 from unknown sources. More than 50 preliminary positive patients are awaiting confirmation.

Chuang Shuk-kwan from the Centre for Health Protection said the unknown-source patients live in Sha Tin, Tseung Kwan O, Tai Wai, Tung Chung, Tuen Mun, Skep Kip Mei, Shau Kei Wan, North Point and Sheung Shui.

A 15-year-old boy from Kiangsu-Chekiang College in North Point tested preliminary positive, prompting the school to close for 14 days and students and teachers to be tested.

Infectious disease expert Leung Chi-chiu said the number of cases surged by seven times in seven days.

He called for the government to tighten social distancing measures to stringent levels such as those during the third wave in July and August.

"If not, it's nearly impossible to control [the outbreak] in the short term," he said.

Leung said authorities should be "in hot pursuit" of contact tracing to cut transmission chains before extensive outbreaks.

"We should also prepare backup quarantine facilities, in case existing ones are saturated due to a rapid surge in close contacts," he said.