Compulsory testing stepped up as daily cases drop

The government further tightened its mandatory testing criteria on Saturday, as health officials reported 19 new coronavirus cases.

With immediate effect, residential buildings will be subject to a mandatory testing order if there is one new coronavirus case, whether or not the source of infection is traceable.

The new requirement comes less than a week after the government said buildings with one new case with an unknown source will be ordered to undergo coronavirus tests.

“With that very vigilant type of ring-fencing, we could, we believe, detect these cases earlier, especially for the cases of connected ones,” said Dr Ronald Lam, the new controller of the Centre for Health Protection.

“We are right now at a very important crossroads, you can see the cases daily are a bit swinging up and down, so it is quite critical that we have to further strengthen the measures further in order to compress the cases downward.”

Among the newly reported cases, 16 were infected locally, six of which could not be traced.

There were three additional cases for the cluster from the construction sites of the airport’s third runway project, bringing the total number of patients from the group to 27.

The daily figure was down from the 37 cases announced on Friday.

Health authorities also revealed that there were about 20 preliminary positive cases.