The Tourism Commission today announced that it will launch a free and voluntary COVID-19 testing scheme for registered frontline hotel staff on August 28.

About 18,000 frontline staff of more than 200 hotels who are willing to be tested had earlier registered with the commission through their hotels.

Those concerned will receive sampling kits from tomorrow afternoon. They have to register information online and collect the deep throat saliva specimen themselves.

After that, they should return the specimen to the testing agency via their hotels.

The commission hired a qualified testing agency to conduct the testing service through established procurement procedures.

As no personal information will be indicated on the sampling bottles, the testing agency will only have access to barcode numbers but not the identity of specimen owners, it said.

Cases with positive results will be relayed to the Centre for Health Protection for follow-up.