To manage its worst outbreak to date, Hong Kong will test its entire population – not once, not twice, but three times.
Residents of Hong Kong have plenty of enjoyable little ‘brain-ticklers’ to look forward to, after the city announced plans to test its entire population for COVID-19 next month.
The testing scheme was put forward by Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam during a press conference on Tuesday, detailing her intentions to prevent the current outbreak from overwhelming the city’s health-care system.
The testing will be mediatory for all residents, with Lam warning, “Those who do not take the universal test will be held liable.”
The Chinese city is planning to increase their testing capabilities to one million schnoz swabs per day, but residents will also have to take multiple RATs every day they don’t receive a PCR test.
“Since we have a population of some seven million people, testing will take about seven days,” Lam said during the press conference.
To achieve their goal of the big one million, open air mass-testing hubs have been operating around the city, rivalling the efficiency of a Ford production line.
The city is also building new isolation facilities for people who test positive to COVID-19 to avoid putting unnecessary pressure on hospitals.
Meanwhile in Sydney, we can’t even buy RATs when we need them, and our population of five million people has already overwhelmed the healthcare system. Go figure.
As we know all too well, waiting in line for hours to have a swab shoved up your nose isn’t the most pleasant experience. But if Hong Kong can pull off these plans, they could avoid a whole lot of much less pleasant repercussions.
