HK customs finds 4 more face masks with high bacterial content

By The SUN

These masks found with high bacterial content are being sold online as well 

 

Customs authorities have advised the public to stop using four brands of surgical masks found to carry high levels of bacteria.

Listed in the warning published on Friday, Apr 17 are the masks labeled Atos, Masker Bedah Karet, Q-Frezz and AdPro.

On Mar 20, four other mask brands were also identified as having bacterial count that exceeded the maximum permitted limit. They were: Bre-easy, Softy Hygiene, Khatraco, and Lastik Halkali.

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All the named brands of surgical masks are packed in boxes of 50 pieces each, and are sold for between $150 and $280. All the samples tested had no indication as to where they were manufactured.

Some of the brands have been advertised in online shopping groups on Facebook where many of the members are Filipinos.

Also warned were pharmacies or traders found selling the unsanitary and potentially hazardous face masks.

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A press release from Customs said the four brands recently tested had exceeded the maximum permitted limit of bacterial count by 0.2 to 1.35 times, in violation of the Consumer Goods Safety Ordinance (CGSO).

The first batch was found to have a bacterial load of  between 0.4 to 11.5 times the permitted limit.

Following the release of the test results, Customs officers conducted a search of four shops located in Causeway Bay, North Point and Sheung Shui, comprising a pharmacy, a grocery, general merchandise, and a fruit store.

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Four people – three men and a woman – were arrested, aged between 34 and 54. They are still detained for investigation.

A further investigation was carried out in various retail shops in several districts but no more masks bearing the indicated labels were found.

However, Customs is still investigating the source of the dubious masks, and has not ruled out further arrests.

In addition, the four kinds of surgical masks will undergo further testing to establish the types of bacteria in them.

Customs says those found selling these masks will be prosecuted

The inspection of surgical masks being sold to the public is part of a large-scale, territory-wide special operation codenamed “Guardian” which Customs launched on Jan 27 as the Covid-19 epidemic began to spread.

To date, Customs says it has already tested a total of 111 samples for bacterial count, and 103 of them were found to be up to standard.

Customs advises the public to observe the following tips when purchasing and using surgical masks:

* Read carefully the instructions on the packages in the purchasing process;

* Check if there is any damage or dirt on the packages and stop using surgical masks with stains or odd smells;

* Pay attention to the proper way of using surgical masks;

* Change surgical masks at a suitable time;

* Store surgical masks in dry places; and

* Purchase only at reputable retail shops.

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Filipino maker of HK’s biggest pizza passes away at 39

By Vir B. Lumicao

Sonsing with his trademark extra-large pizza

A young Hong Kong-raised Filipino entrepreneur who made his mark on the city’s food and restaurant industry by offering the biggest pizza in town has passed away.

Roland Joseph Sonsing, better known among his friends as RJ, died on Apr 11 in his hometown of Taguig City in Metro Manila. He was 39.

RJ is the eldest son of Ollie Sonsing, a musician who came to Hong Kong in the 1970s when Filipino bands and entertainers were in great demand in the city’s nightclub and restaurant circuits.

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He was in the Philippines when death overtook him, according to his younger sister Regina. He left a wife and four young children. His remains were buried in the Garden of Memories Memorial Park in Pateros on Apr 14.

Friends who broke the news about his demise said Sonsing suffered a heart attack.

Sonsing was one of four young Filipinos in Hong Kong who were featured in the South China Morning Post nearly three years ago about their struggle to rise above the discrimination and marginalization that ethnic minority children suffer in this city.

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The article details how Sonsing had worked in the kitchen of Paisano pizzeria– then known as serving the city’s biggest pizza - until he rose to the position of general manager and executive chef.

Not content to remain an employee, he took a bold move in 2013 and set up his own pizzeria, Checkmate Pizza, in Praya, Kennedy Town. It quickly gained popularity for serving the biggest pizza in Hong Kong and its equally sought-after buffalo chicken wings.

Checkmate takes pride in serving 30-inch pizzas, while Paisano’s biggest measures 24 inches across.

 

Checkmate Pizza's Hung Hom branch opened in 2017

In 2017 Checkmate Pizza opened a branch in Hung Hom, with Sonsing welcoming guests with free pizzas and drinks.

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Sonsing and his siblings came to Hong Kong when he was five years old to join their father, who was a musician at a nightclub in Tsimshatsui, and his mother, who was a quality control engineer for a tobacco company.

He and his younger sister Regina went to Delia Memorial School in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, which offers separate Chinese and English curricula for local and ethnic minority children.

After secondary school, he went back to the Philippines to enroll in college, staying with his grandparents in the family compound in Tipas, a lakeside village in Taguig City, and developing his passion for cooking.

He spent a few years in Taguig, got married and had one child, before deciding to return to Hong Kong in 2005 when he realized that finding a job that paid a decent salary in Manila was difficult.

He and his wife had three more children since, but Sonsing decided his family should stay behind in Manila. In the SCMP article, he said he wanted his children to grow up learning Filipino culture, something that he didn't get the chance to do.

Sonsing also said that although he had lived in Hong Kong for more than three decades, he still considered himself a Filipino.

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Record number of Covid-19 patients discharged from HK hospitals

By Daisy CL Mandap

 

Only half the number of isolation rooms in 17 public hospitals are still occupied by Covid-19 patients

A record 48 confirmed Covid-19 patients were discharged from 14 public hospitals across Hong Kong today, according to health officials at their daily press briefing today, Apr 17.

This brought down the total number of patients in hospitals to 482, out of a total tally of 1022. Four new cases were recorded today, the sixth day in a row that the number had been in the single digit.

“The number of discharged patients is at an all-time high today. Over half of the confirmed cases have been released,” said Dr Linda Yu, chief manager of the Hospital Authority.

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Of those in hospital, nine remain in critical condition, seven are in serious condition while the rest are all stable.

Yu said that as a result, the occupancy rate at the isolation rooms in hospitals has gone down to about 50%, which means that there is no more need to transfer recovering patients to second-tier beds, and there will be no waiting time for newly confirmed cases.

All 4 new cases today involved people who had arrived from the United Kingdom, aged 13-55, of whom three are students.

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Two cases were highlighted, that of a 21-year-old female student who tested positive of Covid-19 nearly a month after flying in from the UK.

The patient arrived on Mar 21 and checked into a hotel for her mandatory quarantine. As compulsory testing was not yet required for all new arrivals in Hong Kong, she was not asked to give a deep-throat saliva sample. She went home to her family’s flat in Kornhill, Quarry Bay after the quarantine.

 

The student's family who lives in Kornhill estate have been put in a quarantine centre

After she ended her quarantine, she went shopping at nearby Cityplaza in Taikoo Shing, and visited a friend in her home where she chatted with the friend's family for about 20 minutes.

On Apr 11 she developed a mild headache. She went to the Hong Kong Sanatorium for a check-up on Apr 13, and the next day, was asked to give a saliva sample. She tested positive today.

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Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection said the case is being classified as a “probable local” one because of the length of time it took for the patient to return a positive result.  

But, she added, “Most likely she contracted it overseas , given that the local situation is not that bad.”

Chuang also said the viral load of the patient is low, which could indicate that she might have contracted the disease earlier but did not realize it because she did not have symptoms.

Another case that was singled out was that of the 55-year-old woman who returned from the UK on Apr 16 and had the mandatory testing at AsiaWorld-Expo, which yielded a positive result.

The woman developed a fever and cough on Mar 17 while in the UK, but she did not seek treatment and the symptoms subsided two days later.

Chuang rejected a suggestion the woman had flown to Hong Kong to seek treatment here. She did not have symptoms when she arrived, and it had been past the two-week incubation period for the disease, Chuang said. Besides, she is a Hong Kong resident who is entitled to seek medical care here.

Despite the drastic drop in the number of new cases, the experts are still urging caution, saying it is still too early to say the epidemic has been put under control.

As to whether the government can relax some of the social distancing measures it introduced recently to contain the spread of the disease, Dr Chui Tak-yi, Undersecretary for Food and Health, said they will have to wait until Apr 23, when the restrictions are due to be lifted.

Before then, he said the government will consult experts and study the situation in other countries before deciding whether to lift the restrictions as scheduled, or extend them further.

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Unrepentant Pinay who stole $90k in jewelry and cash from employer jailed for 6 months

By Vir B. Lumicao

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A Filipina helper who admitted stealing nearly $90,000 worth of jewelry and cash from her employer has been jailed for six months by a Kowloon City magistrate.

Sheila Grace Laidan, a 45-year-old mother of two, was sentenced by Magistrate David Chum today, Apr 16, after she pleaded guilty to two theft charges.

Laidan was charged on Feb 14, two days after police arrested her after her female employer, Chan Mei-ching, discovered that on several occasions between December 2019 and January this year, some pieces of jewelry were missing from her safe.

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Chan confronted the maid about the missing jewelry and Laidan admitted taking them because she needed money. The employer did not report the case at the time out of sympathy.

On Feb 10, Chan withdrew $40,000 from a bank for her business and put the money in her bag. Two days later, she discovered that $10,000 was missing. She confronted the maid, who admitted she took the money.

The theft was reported and police officers arrested Laidan after finding two empty jewelry boxes belonging to Chan inside her wardrobe.

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The stolen items were five gold bangles, one diamond ring, a pair of silver earrings, a gold pendant with a total value of $79,400, apart from the $10,000 cash.

When confronted by Chan about the missing items, the helper admitted she had pawned the jewelry.

On Apr 2, Laidan pleaded guilty to stealing both the jewelry pieces and the $10,000 cash.

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The prosecution told the court today that all the missing jewelry items were recovered from the pawnshop after Chan paid $7,275 to redeem them. But the $10,000 was not recovered as she had remitted the money immediately to the Philippines.

The prosecutor also said the employer was seeking $10,000 compensation.

In mitigation, Laidan’s counsel from the Duty Lawyer Service said his client, who came to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper for Chan in 2011, committed the thefts because she needed money for her sick daughter’s operation.

The lawyer also said Laidan had admitted guilt, and helped the police by giving the address of the pawnshop where she hocked the jewelry.

In sentencing, Chum said Laidan had committed very serious offenses by stealing from her employer. There was a breach of trust because the theft happened in the employer’s house.

He said he understood that the helper committed the offenses because she needed money for the mediation of her daughter, but her employer suffered loss as a consequence.

Chum sentenced the helper to a discounted six months in jail for each of the charges, to be served concurrently.

He also rejected the employer’s claim for compensation, saying Laidan does not have money to pay her back.

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Discharged Covid-19 patient from Insomnia says, ‘Dapat mag-ingat’

By Daisy CL Mandap

Insomnia on D'Aguilar St before (top) and after it was shut down (below) after the coronavirus found its way in

For those who are not taking the Hong Kong government’s warning about social distancing and maintaining good personal hygiene to ward off the much dreaded coronavirus, beware.

A Filipina waitress at Insomnia bar in Lan Kwai Fong who was discharged from hospital on Apr 13, 20 days after being confined for Covid-19, says catching the virus and being treated for it is no joke.

Aside from being isolated while undergoing treatment for a highly dreaded disease, not to mention having to take multiple tablets everyday, there is also the uncertainty brought on by the varying results from the tests.

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“Dapat talaga mag ingat. Hindi mo alam nasa katawan mo na pala yung virus. Ang hirap, kasi nag negative ka na, tapos next day positive. Nakailang negative positive ako,” said the waitress, identified in Hong Kong’s health records as case no 453.

In a way, she was lucky because some patients, even the previously healthy ones, are hit hard by the virus that they are put on ventilators, or worse, intubated. Four of the more than 1,000 confirmed cases in Hong Kong have died.

Of around 100 cases linked to Insomnia and the so-called bar cluster, at least one, a 46-year-old woman who had visited two bars in Lan Kwai Fong in early March, is now in critical condition.

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But for the Filipina waitress, what made the experience more difficult to bear was that she had unknowingly passed on the virus to her 16-year-old son who, though asymptomatic, tested positive on Apr 7 while staying in a quarantine camp.

“Last day nya sana pauwi, pero nag positive sya sa test,” she said.

Her son, identified as case no 930, is now still at Prince of Wales Hospital in Shatin, waiting to be cleared of the coronavirus so he can reunite with his mother in their home in Sheung Wan.

The waitress says she’s not sure how many Filipinos were stricken from the four bars identified in the cluster as the source of the virus. Apart from Insomnia, named were two bars in Wanchai, Dusk till Dawn and Centre Stage. The fourth was All Night Long in Tsim Sha Tsui.

“Marami, pero kami sa floor 4 lang,” she said.

 

The recovered patient says all the band members in the clubs are Filipinos

But she confirmed all the band members who played in the clubs and were found to have the disease, are Filipinos.

First to be reported as a confirmed case is the 29-year-old soloist of the band, who developed a fever, cough and sore throat on Mar 17, and tested positive on Mar 22. He remains in Caritas Medical Centre as of this writing.

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Everybody thought at first that he had passed on the virus to others, but later it turned out that a waiter in Insomnia had experienced symptoms a full week ahead but sought treatment only after the soloist was diagnosed with the virus. He was confirmed as a Covid case on Mar 25.

Records from the Centre for Health Protection show that there were at least three other people who had tested positive after visiting bars in Lan Kwai Fong earlier, including case no 192, who is now in critical condition. She visited two bars in the popular nightspot before experiencing cough and runny nose on Mar 11.

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Among those linked to the bar cluster, nine are musicians or staff of the bars, mostly Filipinos, while 17 were customers. But more cases were added later as, in the case of the Filipina waitress, their family members were also infected.

At least eight of the bar staff and musicians are still in hospital, while the rest have been discharged.

After the soloist was found infected, everybody in the band, as well as the staff of the clubs, were asked to get tested for the disease.

“Ako diniretso na sa QMH (Queen Mary Hospital) dahil may ubo ako,” she said. She immediately tested positive for the virus.

Afterwards, she experienced other disturbing symptoms. “Nawala yung sense of taste at smell for one week,” she recalled.

She also had a cough and shortness of breath, “pero mild lang.”

She was told that the treatment given them was the same one used to treat Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome), given that no cure has yet been found for the novel coronavirus disease, or Covid-19.

As she did not have severe symptoms, she was put on an all-oral treatment, which meant her taking five tablets in the morning and six in the evening.

Now that she has finally gotten rid of the lethal virus, she says she is just grateful to be back home. In a Facebook post, she thanked everyone who sent her food and encouraged her to continue fighting the dreaded disease, from her friends, relatives, as well as the owner of the bar who reportedly checked regularly on her and the other stricken staff.

Case no 453 has looked at Covid-19 in the face, and won.

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