As ‪at 8pm today (October 12), specimens had been collected from a total of 4 938 persons at Wan Chai, Kwai Tsing, Kowloon City and Yau Tsim Mong Temporary Testing Centres set up by the Government for COVID-19 nucleic acid tests. The temporary testing centres will continue to provide service to members of the public tomorrow (October 13).
 
     Specimens from 711 persons were collected today at the Wan Chai Temporary Testing Centre located at Harbour Road Sports Centre.
 
     Specimens from 955 persons were collected today at the Kwai Tsing Temporary Testing Centre located at Shek Lei Community Hall.
 
     Specimens from 463 persons were collected today at the Kowloon City Temporary Testing Centre located at Kai Tak Community Hall.
 
     Specimens from 965 persons were collected today at the Yau Tsim Mong Temporary Testing Centre located at Henry G Leong Yaumatei Community Centre.
 
     As ‪at 10pm today, a total of 1 844 specimens collected under the temporary community testing arrangement had been tested. If any specimen tested shows a positive COVID-19 result, the specimen will be referred to the Public Health Laboratory Services Branch of the Department of Health (DH) for a confirmatory test. Confirmed cases will be followed up and announced by the Centre for Health Protection of the DH.
 
     A Government spokesman said that in view of the worsening COVID-19 epidemic situation in Hong Kong, the Government decided to set up one temporary testing centre in each of the four districts, namely Wan Chai, Kwai Tsing, Kowloon City and Yau Tsim Mong Districts, which are related to recent community outbreak clusters.
 
     All four temporary testing centres will be open from 8am to 1.30pm and ‪2.30pm to 8pm every day ‪until October 14 tentatively, to provide free specimen collection and testing services to facilitate proactive testing of members of the public, in order to identify cases and asymptomatic patients as early as possible so as to cut the transmission chains in the community.
 
     The temporary testing centers will be closed if Tropical Cyclone Warning Signal No. 8 or higher is issued. If Tropical Cyclone Warning Signal No. 8 or higher is cancelled within two hours before the closing time of centres, the centres will not open during the day.
 
     Moreover, to facilitate more members of the public to receive COVID-19 tests, distribution time of the deep throat saliva specimen collection packs at the 46 general outpatient clinics (GOPCs) of the Hospital Authority (HA) has been extended to ‪9am to 1pm and ‪2pm to 5pm from Monday to Friday, since October 9. The 46 HA GOPCs distributed a total of over 2 400 specimen collection packs on October 12. Since ‪July 27, HA GOPCs have distributed over 65 000 specimen collection packs. Over 39 000 specimens were tested by the laboratory, and over 60 were positive for COVID-19.
 
     Furthermore, the second round of testing services provided to frontline staff of catering businesses by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) under the Targeted Group Testing Scheme commenced on October 1. Up to October 11, over 12 900 specimen bottles have been distributed to catering premises and around 4 000 specimens have been tested. The FEHD has arranged a testing agency to deliver specimen bottles at bar areas and a mobile van were parked near the bar areas for three consecutive nights starting from October 9 to encourage personnel in bars and pubs and their patrons to undergo testing. The testing agency distributed a total of over 2 100 specimen bottles in the past three nights. Among them, around 1 770 specimen bottles (included in the over 12 900 specimen bottles mentioned above) were distributed to staff members and around 390 were distributed to patrons.
 
     The spokesman appealed to all members of the public who have doubts about their health condition to undergo testing to protect oneself and others and to fight the virus together.

Ends/Monday, October 12, 2020
Issued at HKT 23:24

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