Hong Kong pandemic expert says infections must fall further before resuming contact tracing as city reports 366 Covid cases

Hong Kong should only resume tracing the source of infection of every Covid-19 patient when daily caseloads fall to low double digits, a government pandemic adviser has said, while another expert expects it to be a prerequisite for the city to resume quarantine-free travel with mainland China.

During previous coronavirus outbreaks, local authorities carried out extensive contact tracing to curb transmission chains and quarantine any potential patients. However, such measures were halted as the fifth wave peaked, with tens of thousands of infections recorded on a daily basis.

As daily infections had fallen to about 400 in the past week, government health expert Professor David Hui Shu-cheong of Chinese University said it was still not the right time to implement contact tracing as cases were still in the three-digit range.

“When there had been a rather extensive outbreak in the community, even though we are doing contact tracing now it would not help in achieving zero cases,” he said.

Health officials reported 366 Covid-19 infections on Friday, including 14 imported cases, and 11 additional deaths. The city’s overall coronavirus tally since the pandemic began stood at 1,203,847, with 9,298 related fatalities.