Hong Kong using electronic wristbands to monitor quarantined residents
HONG KONG: Hong Kong authorities are asking people under quarantine to wear electronic wristbands in order to track their movements, as the region deploys new measures to prevent an “explosion” in coronavirus cases.
Although Hong Kong reported its first infections as early as January, intensive social distancing, movement restrictions and a strong community response have helped to limit the spread of the outbreak.
But amid the growing scale of the global pandemic – which has elevated the risk of coronavirus being brought into the region by visitors and returning residents – officials are concerned by the prospect of a surge in cases.
“In many countries the number of confirmed cases can be described as explosive,” Hong Kong chief executive
Carrie Lam said during her weekly press conference on Tuesday.
“If we don’t adopt some strict measures ... I’m afraid all precaution efforts done in the past two months would be wasted. It will affect the public health of Hong Kong.”
As such, Lam announced that people entering the Chinese-ruled region from today onwards will be forced into quarantine for 14 days.
Hong Kong had previously designated three public housing blocs for quarantine, but those will be reserved for the high-risk cases.
The lower-risk cases will be provided with electronic wristbands, and an accompanying smartphone app, which alert officials if such persons violate the quarantine.
“So far, 5,000 reusable wristbands produced by the (technology) centre are readily available and another 60,000 disposable wristbands have been procured from the market, 5,000 of which were delivered and tested and the remaining 55,000 will be delivered in batches,” said the government in a statement.
Schools, which have been shut since January, were unlikely to resume on April 20 as initially planned, Lam added.
Only last month, all residents returning from China’s Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, were quarantined at home and told to wear the tracking wristbands. – The
Independent