Omicron variant: come forward or face legal action, Hong Kong authorities warn 6 diners as cluster linked to restaurant grows
- Cluster linked to Moon Palace restaurant now comprises five confirmed cases and a preliminary-positive infection but six people have yet to come forward for tests
- Professor David Hui says contact-tracing improvements are required to ‘Leave Home Safe’ app given that some identified as close contacts are ‘uncooperative’
Officials said they had confirmed one more infection and identified another preliminary-positive case originating from the Moon Palace restaurant at the Festival Walk shopping centre in Kowloon Tong.
The new suspected case, if confirmed, would take the total number of Omicron cases in this cluster to six since the first was detected on December 29 after an infected Cathay Pacific flight attendant flouting quarantine rules to dine at the restaurant was found to have exposed others to the variant.
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Health authorities confirmed 29 new Covid-19 cases overall on Monday, the highest since April 18 last year when 30 were recorded.
All but one of the confirmed cases were imported, including a Cathay Pacific pilot who had recently returned from Melbourne. Twenty-six cases were found with the N501Y and T478K strains, indicating a high likelihood of the Omicron variant.
Officials on Monday also reported 40 more preliminary-positive cases. If confirmed the next day, it would see a further surge in the city’s total infection count, which now stands at 12,721, with 213 related deaths.
The latest confirmed Omicron case tied to Moon Palace was a 38-year-old woman who had dined there on December 27 – the day the Cathay employee visited – with a family member found to be infected earlier.
