- Figures come a day after fresh round of new measures were rolled out, targeting more leisure venues in bid to enforce social distancing
Hong Kong on Friday recorded 43 more coronavirus cases, with six tied to pubs and bars, taking the total number of infections to 845.
This came a day after health authorities rolled out a new round of tough measures to shut pubs and bars for two weeks, on top of nine other types of venue that have already been closed to ensure social distancing. Businesses affected range from karaoke lounges to fitness centres and cinemas.
Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch at the Centre for Health Protection, said that while most of the newly infected people, who ranged in age from 16 to 60, had a recent travel history, nine were most likely local transmissions.
Among them, at least five had visited or were otherwise tied to various bars where staff or patrons had previously tested positive for the virus.
One visited All Night Long in Tsim Sha Tsui, while at least one other was a friend of a confirmed infected person who had been to Insomnia in Central, Chuang said. Two others were performers and one was a bar employee.
Another new case was a man who had visited an unspecified bar since returning to Hong Kong from the Netherlands in early March. "We are not sure whether this is an imported case involving a long lapse of time or a locally infected one from a bar," Chuang said.
A Cathay Pacific ground employee had also been infected, but the source of transmission was unclear, as the person had also recently attended a funeral, she said.
Noting that the Ching Ming Festival is a day away, Undersecretary for Food and Health Dr Chui Tak-yi urged people to "think twice" before sweeping graves as the event often attracted more than 200,000 people at government-run cemeteries alone.
Chui pointed out that social-distancing rules already in place banned public gatherings of more than four people.
Earlier in the day, top epidemiologist Professor Gabriel Leung, of the University of Hong Kong, painted a grim picture of the future, saying the pandemic could linger for months even with the most stringent prevention measures in place.
But Zhong Nanshan, mainland China's leading respiratory disease expert, was more optimistic, estimating the Covid-19 disease would be under control in a month.
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