People wearing face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus play at a park in Hong Kong, April 30, 2021. (KIN CHEUNG/AP)
HONG KONG – Hong Kong reported eight new COVID-19 infections on Saturday, all of them imported, bringing the city’s overall tally to 11,782.
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Among the eight new cases, four were from Indonesia, two from India, and one each from the Philippines and Cambodia, according to a release issued by the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health.
Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan called on the public to get vaccinated so that herd immunity could be achieved and people's life could return to normalcy
A total of 139 cases have been recorded in the past 14 days, including 29 local cases, of which 15 were untraceable, the CHP said.
As cases involving a highly contagious coronavirus variant have been found recently, the Hong Kong government has taken more efforts to prevent a possible outbreak, including compulsory testing of all the 370,000 foreign domestic helpers in the financial hub.
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Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee on Saturday stressed the necessity of such measures in a bid to identify the sources of those cases as soon as possible.
Meeting reporters after attending a radio program Saturday morning, Chan said the government has increased its COVID-19 testing capacity to cater to the needs of a large number of people and facilitate foreign domestic helpers' testing.
She said the Food and Health Bureau has allowed a longer time for testing because of the number of people involved. She also said more mobile testing stations were being set up from Saturday.
She called on the public to get vaccinated so that herd immunity could be achieved and people's life could return to normalcy.
Some 1.41 million vaccine doses have been administered in Hong Kong so far, with nearly 500,000 people fully vaccinated.
With Xinhua inputs