HK’s virus number is now close to 11,000

HONG Kong’s Center for Health Protection reported 34 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 yesterday, taking the local total tally to 10,486.

The new cases included 29 local infections, of which eight had an unknown origin. The five imported cases were from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal and Dubai.

There were also over 20 cases testing positive for the coronavirus preliminarily, according to a CHP press briefing.

Chief Secretary for Administration of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government Matthew Cheung announced on Monday that the existing social distancing measures in Hong Kong due to expire on Thursday, including banning of dine-in services in restaurants after 6:00pm local time and group gatherings of no more than two persons, will be extended for another 14 days.

Local health authorities said that the production of the first batch of 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines the HKSAR government procured from the Chinese pharmaceutical company Fosun Pharma have been completed, and the vaccines are expected to arrive in Hong Kong in late February

According to Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority, 766 COVID-19 patients are currently being treated in public hospitals and the community treatment facility at AsiaWorld-Expo, and 28 of them are in critical condition. A total of 177 COVID-19 patients have died from the epidemic in public hospitals in Hong Kong.