Hong Kong housing block evacuated after virus find
Hong Kong, China - More than 100 people were evacuated from a Hong Kong housing block on Tuesday after four residents in two different apartments tested positive for the new coronavirus.
Locals were forced to leave in the early hours as health officials in masks and white overalls scrambled to work out whether the virus had spread through the 35storey complex that houses some 3,000 people.
Hong Kong is on high alert for any potential ‘super spreader’ events, especially in the towering housing blocks that make the city one of the world’s most densely populated places.
During the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed 299 people in Hong Kong, 42 deaths came from just one housing block where about 300 people were infected.
In that outbreak, the virus was found to have spread through faulty drainage pipes.
Officials said Tuesday’s relocation of residents in Tsing Yi district was a precautionary measure after three members of the same family contracted the virus.
The family lived ten floors directly below another man who had already been diagnosed as a carrier.
“We are not sure what was the exact route of transmission,” Wong Ka-hing, from the Centre for Health Protection, said. “It could still be through the usual method of droplets or contact.”
Nonetheless the occupants of 35 flats connected to the same drainage system were moved out.
Health secretary Sophia Chan said four residents who showed flu-like symptoms were taken to a hospital isolation ward but later tested negative for the virus. The others were taken to quarantine camps.
Residents on Tuesday morning found their neighbourhood filled with police and health officials. “Of course I’m scared,” a 59 year old resident, who gave her surname as Chan, said.