More people need to work from home to curb Covid: Nip

The Secretary for the Civil Service, Patrick Nip, has urged private companies to follow the government’s lead in implementing work from home arrangements for staff, saying there is a need to significantly reduce the flow of people in the city to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Government staff have now been asked to work from home “as far as possible”, unless they are involved in anti-epidemic work, or providing essential or emergency services.

Speaking on an RTHK radio programme on Friday, the civil service chief said officials want to send a strong message to the community in light of the worsening Covid situation.

He said the recent increase in unlinked infections means that there are at least one to two hundred transmission chains in the community.

“The rise in untraceable infections shows that our contact tracing can’t catch up with the transmission of the virus. The spread is still very quick, despite our social distancing measures,” Nip said.

“There are still some cross-family gatherings during the Lunar New Year despite our calls to reduce such gatherings. So we expect cases may still rise after the holidays.”

He said there’s a need to drastically reduce the number of people out and about to rein in the spread of the virus.

“Data showed that our flow of people dropped by around 20 percent over the past month. That’s fewer than the 40 to 50 percent drop we saw in previous Covid waves,” the minister added.

Nip said based on previous experience, around 60 to 70 percent of government workers won’t be able to work from home under the latest policy.

But he said the suspension of non-essential and non-emergency services may still cause inconvenience to the public, and he asked for their understanding.