Tung Chung residents flock to Covid testing stations

Long queues have formed outside testing stations in Tung Chung, after a resident of the area was found to have caught a mutated strain of the coronavirus via an unknown local source.

Mandatory testing notices have been issued for people who have visited a shopping mall, a park, and a wet market that the resident, a domestic worker, had visited. Those who have visited those places are required to be tested by Saturday.

Some of those who were in the lines outside two testing stations that opened on Friday morning complained that they were worried about getting infected during their hour-long wait in the queue.

“There are too few testing stations – just two in Tung Chung. Shouldn’t there be more? Because if one or two people here are infected, that could cause an outbreak here,” said a woman surnamed Cheung.

Another woman said the queue would only grow as she said the scope of testing was wide.

But a man surnamed Chow, who was in the line with his mum in a wheelchair, did not mind the wait, and praised the government for the arrangement.

“The government is doing great,” he said. “Getting tested will put our minds at ease.”

A grandmother, who was getting tested with her four-year-old grandson, was worried that the mutant strain had been spreading among foreign domestic workers.

“There are quite a lot foreign helpers [here] during weekends, and they also pick up children from kindergartens,” she said.

Apart from the domestic worker, the 10-month-old baby she cares for was also confirmed with the virus.

Their infections forced the evacuation on Thursday evening of a residential block in Tung Chung where they live.