This undated photo shows Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor at her office in Admiralty. (EDMOND TANG / CHINA DAILY)
HONG KONG – Hong Kong has successfully contained the pandemic through the concerted efforts of the community and by leveraging innovation and technology to fight COVID-19, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said Monday.
In an article, Lam said Hong Kong has not recorded a single local case for 48 days in a row since June 7 while a total of 5.27 million doses of vaccines have been administered to members of the public.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Hong Kong has not recorded a single local case for 48 days in a row since June 7 while a total of 5.27 million doses of vaccines have been administered to members of the public
“The epidemic situation is clearly under control," Lam said, adding that the city's vaccination rate has also been rising steadily over the past month.
Lam said that, if the vaccination rate can be maintained at a high level, it could reach 70 percent by the end of September, “building an initial immune barrier for Hong Kong.”
“This achievement does not come by easily. I would like to thank various anti-epidemic teams for their hard work and members of the public for their full cooperation,” she said.
“Apart from the concerted efforts of the community to fight the epidemic, it is also down to the wide application of innovation and technology which the government has been actively promoting and supporting in recent years,” she added.
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Lam said the government facilitated the introduction of testing technology on a large scale by local private laboratories which increased the maximum testing volume to about 100,000 samples per day currently.
“In fact, Hong Kong has conducted more than 21 million tests in total, which ranks among the top in the world in terms of the number of tests conducted per million people, and with regard to our number of confirmed cases, our testing volume is higher than any other places in the world,” she said.
Lam said the Environmental Protection Department and the Drainage Services Department have been working with a team from the University of Hong Kong in conducting sewage surveillance, applying the testing technology developed by the HKU team to trace the transmission of COVID-19 in the community and in individual buildings.
“Hong Kong is a global leader in the research and development and application of sewage surveillance, and the technology is becoming increasingly mature. Since late last year, nearly 5,000 sewage samples have been taken for testing in Hong Kong,” Lam said.
She said compulsory testing operations have been conducted at 236 buildings with sewage tested positive for COVID-19. Fifty-two confirmed cases have been identified, many of which were detected before any confirmed case was found in the building.
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“Recently, the HKU team has developed a new testing method that can quickly detect mutant virus strains in sewage, enabling earlier warnings about the epidemic situation in the community,” she added.
Lam said the HKSAR also developed StayHomeSafe mobile app to monitor whether a quarantined person stays at his or her designated residence. She said the app and the electronic wristbands have been used by more than 540,000 people and this is the first time in the world that such technology has been applied on such a large scale.
She also pointed out that the HKSAR developed modular integrated construction (MiC) technology to significantly reduce the construction time of quarantine facilities; the LeaveHomeSafe mobile app to provide members of the public with a convenient digital tool for recording their whereabouts without compromising their privacy; and the CuMask which can be reused for 60 times.
The University of Science & Technology came up with a Multilevel Antimicrobial Polymer coating which can be sprayed on material surfaces to kill bacteria and viruses with an effective period of up to 90 days while the Productivity Council developed the kNOw Touch – Contactless Elevator Control Panel, which enables users to press the buttons in the elevators without touching the panel to minimize the risk of virus transmission, Lam said.
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She also said that the Government's Health & Medical Research Fund approved a total of HK$170 million in funding last year to support local universities to conduct 49 research studies on COVID-19, including supporting two local universities to undertake four vaccine development projects.
“Among them, a nasal spray COVID-19 vaccine developed by the HKU in collaboration with researchers in the mainland is in first phase safety clinical trials. It is the first nasal spray vaccine approved for phase I clinical trials,” Lam said.