Opinion | After Sars, is Hong Kong prepared for another deadly coronavirus outbreak? Unlikely, with Carrie Lam in charge
- Hong Kong has reported the first cases of the Wuhan coronavirus infection, but the initial lack of a health declaration protocol at train stations has hampered contact tracing. The government must do better to show it has learned from Sars
One of them is a 39-year-old mainland passenger who arrived in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon station on Tuesday aboard the G5607 high-speed train from Shenzhen. He displayed signs of a fever at the port of entry and was sent to Queen Elizabeth Hospital for further examination.
In the second case, a 56-year-old local man who fell ill after returning from a visit to Wuhan sought help at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Preliminary tests came back positive for the virus in both cases. More tests are pending.
Meanwhile, the two men have been transferred to the Hospital Authority’s infectious diseases centre at Princess Margaret Hospital, and the authorities have urged passengers who sat near the 39-year-old man on the train to get in touch so they could be checked and potentially quarantined.
However, as the authorities did not require incoming passengers at train stations to fill in a health declaration form with their contact details, they have been unable to track down those who were in close contact with the infected passenger. This was obviously a major oversight by the Hong Kong government, which should have taken more active precautions against the deadly virus.
