Govt still trying to trace source of Covid variant

Infectious disease expert David Hui said on Saturday that officials are still struggling to find the source of a highly infectious Covid-19 infection that broke Hong Kong’s 42-day streak of no untraceable cases.

Hui, who advises the government, said the 17-year-old girl, who caught a mutant strain, has only infected her immediate family so far.

He said Hong Kong has prevented a community outbreak, thanks to tight social distancing rules and the public’s adherence to mask-wearing and personal hygiene.

The Chinese University expert said it’s unlikely that this case involves an undiscovered mutated strain from Hong Kong.

“I think it’s probably someone that has entered Hong Kong and finished the 21-day hotel quarantine with a long incubation period and then he or she developed some infection, and infected the 17-year-old girl,” Hui said.

Experts in Hong Kong had carried out genome sequencing matching but had failed to find the source of the infection.

Hui said this was probably because some developing countries were not doing genome sequencing frequently, which meant they were not uploading information to the World Health Organization and other websites.

“So that makes it quite difficult,” he said.

Experts said the case – and subsequent infections of family members – highlighted the importance of boosting the vaccination rate in Hong Kong as quickly as possible.