Ying Kwai House locked down

January 22, 2022

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

 

Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced a five-day lockdown operation at Ying Kwai House in Kwai Chung Estate along with other restriction and testing arrangements in nearby places.

 

The decision was made following an earlier restriction and testing declaration at Ying Kwai House, where preliminary positive COVID-19 cases have been identified. The residents must stay at home and get tested daily until January 27 morning.

 

Additionally, four other buildings in Kwai Chung Estate, ie Hiu Kwai House, Yuk Kwai House and Nga Kwai House, as well as Chin Kwai House, are put under restriction and testing declarations this evening.

 

Mrs Lam noted that under the dynamic zero infection strategy, Hong Kong copes with COVID-19 whenever a case arises.

 

She said: “The important thing is under our strategy, we strengthen our capacity to tackle these episodic outbreaks in order to suppress the spread of the variant as soon as possible. So that there will not be a massive community outbreak in Hong Kong.”

 

She added that while Hong Kong is not trying to attain absolute zero for local infections, it will not opt for the living with the virus strategy.

 

“In my view, Hong Kong does not possess the prerequisites for going for that approach. One of the reasons is because we still want to open our borders, not only with the Mainland, but also with the rest of the world. And secondly is our vaccination rate is not yet ideal.”

 

She stressed that the city has to stay vigilant against the Omicron variant.

 

“All the Omicron cases are stable, but Omicron does cause fatalities in other parts of the world. So we have to be extremely careful, especially amongst those unvaccinated people.

 

“We will continue to adopt the strategy that has taken Hong Kong through the last two years. But in the course of implementing the strategy and individual measures, I and my team will continuously review and improve and try to make life slightly less difficult for the people of Hong Kong.”

 

Owing to these latest arrangements, the Government announced that all of its employees living in Kwai Chung Estate do not need to return to their offices. They should stay home and avoid going out for the time being until receiving further notice from their respective bureaus and departments. Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip also appealed to employers to make similar arrangements for their staff where practicable.

 

Meanwhile, the Education Bureau said in a press statement that starting from next Monday, all schools should temporarily arrange for their staff residing in Kwai Chung Estate not to return to schools to work. In addition, schools located at the specified restricted area under restriction testing declarations in the estate and its vicinity should consider letting their staff work from home, and suspend all scheduled on-campus activities until the schools’ Lunar New Year holidays.

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