Health Bureau (SSM) Director Alvis Lo Iek Long has warned that Macao’s Covid-19 infection rate is likely to peak in early January, three or four weeks after the gradual easing of pandemic restrictions started.
The health chief also acknowledged that with the new anti-Covid-19 landscape in place, official statistics tend to underestimate the “real” number of people in the city infected with the novel coronavirus.
Lo was speaking while attending a current affairs phone-in programme hosted by Ou Mun Tin Toi, the Chinese-language radio channel of public broadcaster TDM.
Lo also noted that Macao entered its second phase of relaxed Covid-19 restrictions yesterday, when the government’s home isolation for Covid-19 carriers commenced, according to which those who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in a nucleic acid test or a rapid antigen test may be able to undergo isolation at home, depending on the outcome of a self-health assessment to be submitted to the Health Bureau via an e-platform.
The government announced last week that it had decided to transition the city from a dynamic zero-Covid approach to an anti-Covid-19 situation that implicitly allows constant transmissions of the novel coronavirus in the community. The government said last week that it will pursue a step-by-step approach towards easing Covid-19 restrictions with the aim of preventing a Covid-19 outbreak from occurring “exponentially”, The Macau Post Daily reported.
Lo said yesterday that as Macao has now entered the second phase of the government’s new anti-Covid-19 approach, he expects the number of daily new infections to continue rising.
The health chief also reaffirmed that over 90 per cent of those infected with the Omicron variant will normally be asymptomatic or just come down with slight symptoms, because of which they can undergo isolation at home.
