A 36-year-old Police Constable who is stationed in Kowloon West Region has been diagnosed with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). He underwent a virus test in a designated clinic yesterday (August 26) and was tested positive for COVID-19. The police officer did not have close contact with members of the public during work and has no travel history over the past 14 days. He last attended work on August 25.
 
    Police are highly concerned about the case, and have the following messages for the public:
 
1. While awaiting further assessment and recommendations from the Department of Health (DH), colleagues that might have come into close contact with the police officer have been arranged to work from home and undergo tests for the virus with negative test results;
 
2. Police have deployed staff to clean and disinfect the working places of the police officer; and
 
3. Police have reminded all colleagues to maintain personal hygiene and reduce social contact to lower the risk of contracting and transmitting the virus, and that they should immediately report their cases and seek medical attention if they feel unwell.
 
     Police will liaise closely with the DH and proactively provide information such as the recent duty record and roster of the police officer concerned. Arrangements will be made for any close contacts to be conveyed to designated centres for quarantine.

     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.

     The Secretary for Education, Mr Kevin Yeung and the Permanent Secretary for Education, Ms Michelle Li met representatives from secondary and primary school councils and school heads associations this afternoon (August 27) to exchange views on arrangements for the new school year. The Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam, also attended the meeting to express her care and support to schools.

     For the prevention and control of COVID-19, all secondary and primary students will learn from home with the support of schools upon commencement of the new school year on September 1.

     The Chief Executive and the Secretary for Education thanked all principals and teachers for designing and arranging suitable teaching activities including online lessons for students. They also listened to the views from the school head representatives on resumption of face-to-face classes.

     The Education Bureau (EDB) is closely monitoring the development of the epidemic and seeking advice from medical experts. The bureau will make an announcement and inform schools early to allow them to make better preparation once a decision on resumption of face-to-face classes is made.

    

     The Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam, continued to hold consultation sessions for the 2020 Policy Address. She met with representatives of civil servant organisations today (August 27) to listen to their views on the upcoming Policy Address. The session was attended by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, and the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Patrick Nip, as well as more than 10 representatives from the civil service central consultative councils and major service-wide staff unions.
      
     Expressing her gratitude to civil servant colleagues for standing fast at their posts and shouldering extra work in the course of the fight against COVID-19 in Hong Kong, Mrs Lam said civil servants also responded proactively to the soon-to-be-launched Universal Community Testing Programme, and that their commitment to serving the public and their professionalism is admirable. She said the fight against the disease is a long-lasting battle and that she hopes to overcome the virus together with civil servant colleagues to provide the best services to members of the public.   
      
     Mrs Lam will hold other theme-based Policy Address consultation sessions in the month ahead. Apart from the one today, the rest of the sessions will be conducted via video conferencing.

  

The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:

     The spokesperson for Tuen Mun Hospital (TMH) made the following announcement today (August 27) on an incident of electricity supply:

     At around 9.30am today (August 27), the electricity power supply in TMH was temporarily interrupted for around 20 seconds in the Main Block, Special Block and different locations of the Pathology Block due to a utility electricity supply incident. As a result, there was a brief suspension of operations of lighting, air-conditioning and elevators. Contingency plan was activated immediately and urgent inspections and repair were carried out to resume normal operations of the hospital. All concerned systems put back to normal after the resumption of the utility electricity supply.

     During the electricity supply interruption, patient services of TMH remained normal. The Department of Accident and Emergency (A&E), operating theatres and negative pressure systems in isolation wards maintain normal operation. However, the negative pressure system of a resuscitation room at A&E was affected. No patient was inside the room during that period of time. The service of a laboratory handling high risk specimens was also suspended, as the negative pressure system setting of the laboratory was affected. Staff of the laboratory handled all specimens as soon as possible after service resumption at noon.

     TMH together with Electrical and Mechanical Services Department are conducting a comprehensive inspection of the power supply system and to ensure that normal operation has resumed in all medical equipment. TMH will contact the utility power supply company to look into the cause of the incident.