Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung today visited the Centre for Health Protection’s Contact Tracing Office (CTO) at Kai Tak Community Hall to thank staff members for their tireless efforts in combating the COVID-19 epidemic.

Mr Cheung was pleased to note that in response to the outbreak in a fitness centre in early March, the office took prompt action to speed up the process of identifying close contacts, making notable achievements.

The fitness centre outbreak has so far resulted in 135 confirmed cases. The office successfully traced about 1,500 contacts in a few days and had them quarantined. Around 3,200 household contacts of those close contacts were successfully traced and asked to undergo compulsory testing.

For the fitness centre cluster, the CTO identified an average of about 35 contacts or family members for each confirmed case, much higher than the average of four contacts per confirmed case identified when it first started operation.

Such efforts have significantly helped in cutting viral transmission chains. Over the past two weeks, the number of confirmed cases with unknown sources has largely remained in the single digits, proving the effectiveness of the CTO’s work.

Mr Cheung thanked all CTO staff members, including the officers temporarily seconded from the disciplined services such as Police, Immigration, Customs & Excise and Fire Services departments for their tireless efforts in contact tracing.

The Chief Secretary noted that the officers from the disciplined services, with their investigation experience, help conduct tracing with greater precision and efficiency in a professional and scientific manner.

Their deployment also frees up medical and nursing staff, who may then focus on conducting epidemiological investigations and make good use of the data collected in the investigations for further analysis, he added.

So far, the office has successfully helped trace over 14,000 contacts and advised more than 9,000 household contacts to undergo compulsory testing.