Disco Bay residents unhappy with testing arrangements

Residents of Discovery Bay have urged the government to clarify wording of its testing order and set up more Covid testing centres, after authorities told almost everyone living there and recent visitors to get tested.

The order was imposed late Tuesday after sewage samples from the Lantau development were found to contain Covid-19.

“I think it must be positive sewage from the Environmental Protection Department that triggered the compulsory testing notice,” said Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection at a press briefing.

“We do have a few human cases who’re working in the Discovery Bay mall, the Plaza, concerning customer service, concierge and also the cleaners.”

A long queue had formed outside a testing centre in Discovery Bay before it was scheduled to open on Wednesday afternoon.

A resident said he had no choice but to get the test done.

“I hope they’d open more testing centres so the people can be less concentrated in one area,” he told RTHK.

Another resident, who’s from Sweden, said she found the information on the government’s website a bit puzzling.

“The information given by the government on the compulsory testing is hard to interpret, it’s not very clear. It says ‘get tested between 8-13 February’, but [people] might interpret it differently,” she said.

“Does it mean I have to get tested every day in between those days, or only once?”

The woman said the rest of the world is “living with the coronavirus” and she thinks Hong Kong has to do the same eventually.

Some outsiders were deterred by the testing order.

One family was going to have a picnic with their friends in Discovery Bay but decided to cancel the trip and take the ferry back to Central.

“We were just going to visit a friend, and then we got told that there’s a compulsory testing order, so we got on the ferry and we had to come back out again. So we had a very quick trip, unfortunately,” she said.
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Last updated: 2022-02-09 HKT 20:20