Third runway projects suspended over Covid outbreak

Authorities have issued a mandatory testing order for around 3,000 workers at two construction sites at the airport’s third runway project following a cluster outbreak there.

Speaking at a press briefing on Saturday, the Centre for Health Protection’s Dr Albert Au said construction work at the two sites will be suspended to allow thorough disinfection.

This comes after five more workers at the sites came down with Covid-19, bringing the total number of infections there to nine.

Au said 60 of their colleagues and around 20 of their family members will be put in quarantine as a precaution. Thousands more workers in other sites within the area were also advised to get tested for coronavirus.

He said the virus might have been spread in shared changing rooms, but he believed there is a low risk for workers of different companies at the sites to have contracted the disease from them.

“Contractors of different companies, their workers do not mix together. Because the island is a very very huge area and they are divided into different zones, in which different contractors work in different areas, so the possibility of mixing between the workers of different companies in the construction sites is very minimal,” Au said.

Altogether, authorities reported 28 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, all but two were locally acquired.

Six cases did not have a clear source of infection.

This included a nurse who worked at the reception of an eye clinic in Champion Building in Jordan.

Authorities are calling on people who have visited Dr Lam Hok-suen between 26 and 29 January to get tested. The clinic will be closed for a fortnight.

The daily figure is the lowest in nearly a month, but Au said it’s too early to decide whether this wave of outbreak has reached its peak, warning there’s still risk of a resurgence if people attend gatherings over the coming Chinese new year.

Au noted that in the past seven days, forty percent of the cases were of unknown sources, which showed that there are still a lot of silent transmissions in the community.

There are more than 40 preliminary positive cases.