Hong Kong is threatening to knock down the doors of residents who do not respond to authorities conducting blitzes of mandatory testing, as the territory tries to end a persistent winter wave of COVID-19 cases.
“The government may take legal action, including removing individuals or applying to a magistrate for a warrant to break into and forcefully enter a unit,” authorities said in a statement yesterday.
Hong Kong has been attempting to curb a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections with targeted lockdowns that have seen authorities cordon off an area and restrict movement until residents receive negative results.
Photo: Bloomberg
The government has said that some might be deliberately evading the tests in areas that range from densely packed neighborhoods to just a handful of buildings.
During surprise lockdowns in four Hong Kong districts on Monday evening, about 17 percent of the 680 households that officers visited did not answer the door, according to Bloomberg calculations.
The government said that it found no positive cases after testing almost 1,700 residents.
Hong Kong, which saw cases of COVID-19 early last year as it began its spread around the world, has encountered more waves than many other places, and is enduring a prolonged round of on-again, off-again disease prevention restrictions.
Residents and business owners eagerly looking for an end to a recession brought on by months of street protests followed by the pandemic must endure what Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) has called “ambush-style operations.”
Hong Kong authorities have conducted eight operations and tested about 10,000 people since Jan. 23, but have only uncovered 14 positive COVID-19 cases. The latest six mini-lockdowns did not uncover any positive cases.
Amid repeated criticism that the mini-lockdown tactic has not been effective, Lam defended the government’s methods yesterday.
She said that they were just one preventative measure among many and that the number of confirmed cases unearthed was not the only metric of success.
“You can’t really measure the effectiveness of these operations by the number of cases identified,” Lam told a weekly briefing ahead of a meeting of her Executive Council. “I don’t think it’s a waste of resources.”
These targeted test blitzes should not replace other efforts in tracing and testing people across the whole transmission chain, said Leung Chi-chiu (梁子超), a former chairman of the Hong Kong Medical Association’s advisory committee on communicable diseases.
“Lockdowns for 12 hours and testing cannot detect cases in incubation,” Leung said. “It is important to avoid giving a false sense of security. Should that cause a delay in going for a retest for any resident with new symptoms, it could cause another embarrassing outbreak.”
In her remarks yesterday, Lam said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had expressed concern about Hong Kong’s spate of infections in a conference call last week.
“President Xi has expressed concern and worries, and that’s totally reasonable,” Lam said. “I believe the president is very much concerned. He wants to support us.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS