Hong Kong begins mass testing amid public doubts

HONG KONG » Hong Kong tested more than 120,000 people for the coronavirus Tuesday at the start of a mass-testing effort that has become another political flashpoint in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.

Volunteers stood in lines at some of the more than 100 testing centers, though many residents are distrustful of the resources and staff being provided by China’s central government and some have expressed fear DNA could be collected.

The Hong Kong government has dismissed such concerns, and leader Carrie Lam urged the public to see the program in a fair and objective light and appealed to critics to stop discouraging people from being tested, since participation is crucial to the program’s success.

“This large-scale universal community testing program is beneficial to fighting the epidemic and beneficial to our society. It will also help Hong Kong come out of the pandemic unscathed and is conducive to the resumption of daily activities,” Lam said at her weekly news conference.

Priscilla Pun, a sales manager, got tested to give herself peace of mind. “I don’t see any reason not to do it, and this way I can let my family in Canada know that I am safe,” said Pun, who was tested at a center in the eastern Quarry Bay neighborhood.

Others, like Giselle Ming, said she decided to take part to support the Hong Kong government’s initiative even though she was not worried that she might be a carrier of the coronavirus. “In this bad situation of the coronavirus, I hope I can do something to help the society,” she said.

More than 650,000 people in the city of 7.5 million signed up in advance for the program, which will last at least a week. It is aimed at identifying silent carriers of the virus — those without symptoms — who could be spreading the disease.

On Tuesday, 126,000 people were tested, according to government officials. Only 10% of people who registered for tests did not turn up. on cargo ships.

At its peak, Hong Kong recorded more than 100 locally transmitted cases a day, after going weeks without any in June.

The outbreak has slowed, with the city reporting just nine cases on Monday, the first time in two weeks that daily infections had fallen to single digits. However, the government and some experts say that community testing can help detect asymptomatic carriers to further stop the spread of the virus.

Respiratory medicine expert professor David Hui said that even though infections have dwindled, the proportion of cases with untraceable sources of infection remain between 30% and 40%.

“That means there must be some silent transmission going on, so community testing has some role in picking up these silent transmitters,” said Hui, a public health adviser to the city’s government. “Hopefully if we can identify these people and isolate them for a period of time that may help to break the transmission chain in the community.” not easy to pick up the disease in its early development, especially if a person is not having symptoms or has not had recent exposure to an infected patient.

Even if mass testing could identify infected patients, they may already be past the infectious stage, he said.

Leung said large-scale testing cannot replace traditional methods of social distancing and contact tracing, and should only be used as a complementary measure.

Some pro-democracy activists, such as Joshua Wong, have publicly opposed the program. Wong called for a boycott, citing Swedish media reports that some test kits being used had high rates of false-positive results.

Lam said that while false-positives can happen, the tests used in the program have passed quality assurance procedures.