No full lockdown, confirmed cases to be triaged: Lam

Hong Kong will not go into a full lockdown where everyone is not allowed to leave their homes during the territory-wide Covid-19 mandatory testing, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said yesterday, but admitted authorities want to control the flow of people during the mass testing.

Previewing her plan for the first time yesterday, Lam also said as it is impossible to send a massive number of patients to community isolation facilities when they test positive, authorities will triage confirmed cases.

Speaking at Lo Wu control point yesterday, Lam was asked about the mixed messages after she said last week she had no plans for a full lockdown but health chief Sophia Chan Siu-chee several days later said authorities had not completely ruled out a lockdown.

Lam said: "I don't think there's a large discrepancy. Sometimes it's the wording that gives people room for imagination. Every time when I'm asked about this, I always say we're not doing a wholesale city lockdown.

"As we all know, some places have done a no-entry-no-exit grounding order or lockdown, which is not going to be imposed in Hong Kong," she said.

But she said measures have been put in place "in order to greatly compress the flow of people" and will continue to do so in accordance with the citywide test.

She said the scale and effective period will be considered under actual circumstances and citizens' demands.

Lam also addressed the isolation of hundreds of thousands of patients who could be detected in the mass testing.

"We have to think about the reality in fighting the epidemic," Lam said. "It's impossible to take everyone from their homes and put them in isolation facilities."

She said the SAR has adopted home isolation for close contacts and, currently, even confirmed cases could be observing home isolation while waiting for admission to hospital or quarantine facilities. In fact, most of them recovered and tested negative during their wait and eventually were not sent to facilities at all.

"We don't have the capacities today and will not have it in the future even after all the efforts we're making because the number of infections is too large," she said.

Lam said authorities will review patients' health condition, household environment and whether they live with high-risk family members such as unvaccinated children and elderly people, when deciding the priorities to send patients to facilities.

"We're doing this in an orderly manner, under a triage mechanism, and we're giving them assistance," she said, adding the Hospital Authority has activated 14 Covid clinics for at-home patients and designated taxi services for their commute.

Lam said she has four principles for the citywide testing, which is to ensure it is done in a comprehensive, speedy, orderly and effective manner.

She would also like to avoid queues at test stations and isolate confirmed cases as soon as possible.

But the mass testing scheme must be planned carefully and thoroughly, adding she is unable to reveal details at this moment.

Seven makeshift isolation centers have been or are being constructed, with the next to be commissioned on the site of the former San Tin Shopping City, after the one in Tsing Yi started taking patients on Tuesday, with around a dozen being transferred there yesterday.

A middle-aged woman showed up at the Tsing Yi facility with her luggage yesterday, wanting to stay in the isolation center, claiming her family had been infected and she had a fever.

But she was asked to leave after being given a rapid test kit.

Infectious disease expert Ho Pak-leung from the University of Hong Kong said the best period for citywide tests is between April 10 and 18, covering the Easter holiday.

Ho supported using rapid antigen testing instead of PCR ones to shorten the wait. Patients can be ruled as non-infectious when they test negative using the rapid test, and allowed to resume their daily activities, he said, adding that most vaccinated patients will recover seven days after testing positive.

Vaccine expert Ivan Hung Fan-ngai, also from HKU, said most experts do not suggest conducting a citywide test now because it is pointless if patients cannot be isolated quickly.

But if authorities insist on a citywide test now, he recommended they require citizens to take three Covid tests, one every three days, during the mass testing period because the median incubation period of the Omicron variant is about three days.