Simon H WANG
From: Simon H WANG <simo...@hkbu.edu.hk>
Date: Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 1:53 PM
Subject: More testing for coronavirus needed for Hong Kong
To: Letters to the Editor <let...@scmp.com>
Cc: <ne...@scmp.com>
As the city was hit by a third-wave of Covid-19 infection with double-digit cases recorded in the past few days, the government had to suspend local schools and tighten social distancing rules. To effectively protect the public health, the government must expand the testing of coronavirus through monitoring the virus in sewage water and implementing pool testing while keeping the public fully informed about how it handled the pandemic.
UK researchers have recently advocated the method of testing coronavirus in sewage water as the virus is often found in human faeces. Through tracing the sewage water samples with the virus, infected cases could be detected in specific communities a week earlier (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53257101), an approach that has been adopted in Singapore and Australia (https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3088466/singapore-checking-peoples-poo-coronavirus). While the use of sea water for toilet flushing in the city may affect the validity of the method, a research team in HKU has been working to adapt this method for Hong Kong. The Department of Health should work with the local researchers and the Drainage Services Department to conduct sewage epidemiology for early detection of community outbreak.
In Wuhan, the original epicentre of the pandemic, the government managed to conduct coronavirus tests for 6.5 million residents in 9 days to prevent a second wave of infections by adopting strategies including "pool testing" (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/26/asia/coronavirus-wuhan-testing-intl-hnk/index.html). By combining samples taken from multiple individuals and testing them in one go, the city significantly boosted its testing capacity to a level comparable to countries such as the United States. In Hong Kong, pool testing should also be considered as a more efficient approach to test large groups of high-risk individuals including taxi and bus drivers, restaurant workers and residents living near infection clusters.
I recently made a number of Code on Access to Information requests to the Department of Health asking whether the government plans to test sewage water and implement pool testing to fight Covid-19 pandemic. Regrettably, the department failed to answer my questions and the Food and Health Bureau had started investigating this case of non-compliance. To keep the public informed about how the government handled Covid-19 pandemic, I urge the South China Morning Post reporting team to follow up with the Department of Health regarding its strategies of testing coronavirus in Hong Kong.
Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong
Phone: 51998025
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