(To watch the full press conference with sign language interpretation, click here.)

The Government’s new testing requirements that cover residential buildings and workplaces aim to identify COVID-19 cases before they form transmission chains in the community.

Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan made the statement at a press conference today.

Under the new testing requirement, all residents have to get tested if an untraceable infection is found in their building, or if the virus is detected in the building’s sewage samples.

“One of the reasons why we lower the threshold of the compulsory testing of people in buildings where COVID-19 cases are detected is we really want to be ahead of the epidemic curve, we really want to find and detect these cases as well as find these cases before they actually form a transmission chain in the community.

“We even lower the threshold of the compulsory testing to one unlinked COVID-19 case found in a building.”

Workplaces will also be subject to the mandatory testing order if two infection cases are detected there, Prof Chan added.

“Another measure, again coming to the objective of cutting the community transmission chains, is to lower the threshold of testing people at workplaces.

“So, all these are the measures for identifying and also cutting the transmission chains.”