By The SUN
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| The reinfected patient entered Macau through the HK-Macau-Zhuhai bridge |
Macau has informed Hong
Kong authorities that an 18-year-old local male patient who tested positive for
Covid-19 in the city in December was found to carry the coronavirus again.
According to a statement issued by the Centre for Health Protection today, Jun 16, the patient was found positive for the virus on Dec 16, 2020 and was deemed linked to another local infection. He recovered and was discharged from hospital on Dec. 30.
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He took a test for Covid-19 on Jun 13 this year on the way to Macau and was found negative. But two days later, while in quarantine in Macau he tested weakly positive. A subsequent test showed he was positive for antibody against the coronavirus.
The
CHP said it is following up the case with the Macau health authority, including
comparing the genetic sequencing of the samples taken from the patient.
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In
the meantime, those identified as close contacts of the patient will be moved
to a quarantine center, and the building where he had resided, which is Wah
Chun House in Wah Fu Estate, Pok Fu Lam, will be put under a compulsory testing
notice.
Meanwhile,
only one imported case was reported in Hong Kong today, involving a 45-year-old
man who had flown in from Sri Lanka. He was asymptomatic.
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At
the same time, health experts have discounted the possibility that the rare
mutant strain first found in a 17-year-old local school girl earlier this month
had come from a pack of frozen crocodile spare ribs in her family’s
refrigerator.
Tests
showed that the frozen meat package was contaminated with the virus, so health
authorities immediately ordered its importer to stop selling frozen crocodile
ribs, and provide samples for testing.
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However,
during talks with investigators the girl reportedly admitted having sneezed on
the package, suggesting it was she who contaminated the frozen product and not
the other way around.
Prof
Benjamin Cowling from the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health
told RTHK it was unlikely the virus had come from the frozen meat, as packaging
wasn’t a major route of transmission.
But
to be sure, he said the virus samples on the packaged meat be compared with the
specimen from the girl, then analyze whether a transmission had occurred, and
how.
“Was
the virus on the meat packaging first, and then infecting the girl, or was it
that the girl had the infection and breathed on the package of meat and that’s
how the virus got there – and because it was frozen it was able to stay there?,”
Cowling asked.
Despite
extensive investigations, the source of the girl’s infection, which ended more
than 40 days of no untraceable case being found in Hong Kong, has yet to be determined.
The
girl, along with her mother and older sister whom she infected, had no recent
travel history.
