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Tourism Commission arranges free and voluntary COVID-19 testing for frontline staff of hotels
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     The Tourism Commission announced today (August 27) that it will launch tomorrow (August 28) the free and voluntary COVID-19 testing scheme for registered frontline staff of hotels. The registered staff will receive sampling kits from their respective hotels starting from tomorrow afternoon.

     A spokesman for the Tourism Commission said, "The Government has rolled out free COVID-19 testing services for high-risk target groups. To combat the epidemic together with the hotel industry, the Government is extending the free target group testing services to the frontline staff of hotels."

     Some 18,000 frontline staff of over 200 hotels who are willing to take the free and voluntary testing have earlier submitted their registrations to the Tourism Commission through their respective hotels. Upon receipt of the sampling kits, staff have to register information at the government website: www.tgptest.gov.hk. Upon collecting the deep throat saliva specimen by themselves, they should return their specimen to the testing agency via their hotels for testing.

     The Tourism Commission has, through the established procurement procedure, hired a qualified testing agency (i.e. Carelink Bioscience Limited) to conduct the testing service. As no personal information will be indicated on the sampling bottles, the testing agency will only have access to the barcode numbers but not the identity of the specimen owners. Cases with positive results will be relayed to the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health for follow-up.

     The Tourism Commission has advised participating hotels to take appropriate measures such as reminding staff distributing the sampling kits to observe good hand hygiene and assigning a designated person to oversee the submission of the samples in order to ensure a smooth implementation of the testing service.
 
Ends/Thursday, August 27, 2020
Issued at HKT 23:00
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