People walk past cordoned off exercise equipment in a park during the COVID 19 pandemic in Hong Kong on March 4, 2022. On Sunday AFP HONG KONG-Hong Kong reported 259 new COVID 19 cases as health authorities investigated an outbreak at a restaurant in Kwun Tong district involving at least nine people.
Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Centre for Health Protection, said in a news briefing that 33 of the new cases were imported while 226 were local infections.
She said that 113 cases were confirmed by nucleic acid tests and 146 by rapid antigen tests. Sunday's figure is lower than the 284 infections logged on Saturday, bringing the infection tally to 1,195, 375 during the fifth wave of the epidemic.
READ MORE: HK sees 298 new virus cases, outbreak at Sheung Wan eatery.
Chuang said 17 of the imported cases were detected at the airport, including four cases on Air India flight AI 314 from New Delhi, three cases on Singapore Airlines flight SQ 894 from the city-state and another three cases on KLM flight KL 819 from Amsterdam.
Chuang said that 11 new cases were linked to the Chinese restaurant Sky Cuisine in Sheung Wan, involving four staff and seven customers, bringing the number of cases in the cluster to 52.
Chuang said more than 20 families of the infected diners came from more than 20 families and occupied more than 20 of the 29 tables on the third floor. The authorities are still looking into the cases to determine the distribution of infections in the dining hall.
When asked about the possibility of a sixth wave of COVID - 19, Chuang said there could be hundreds of silent transmission chains in the community, given that around 200 cases are detected each day. She called on members of the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible to reduce the risks of infection.
Chuang said that nine people who visited Room 12 on the first floor of the Shing Yip Industrial Building in Kwun Tong on the evening of May 9 tested positive for the disease.
Chuang said that they had only stayed for a short period of time to buy snacks there. She added that it is possible for people to get the virus even when wearing masks because of the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant.
She said that investigations are ongoing and that a mandatory testing notice will be issued to anyone who visited the place between 5 pm and midnight on May 9 to get tested for COVID- 19.
When asked about the possibility of a sixth wave of COVID- 19, Chuang said there could be hundreds of silent transmission chains in the community, given that around 200 cases are detected each day. She called for members of the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible to reduce the risks of infection.
The Hospital Authority Chief Manager Sara Ho said at the same time that an 82-year-old female patient with COVID 19 died in the last 24 hours.