A male mainlander who entered Macao early yesterday has been taken to the Health Bureau’s (SSM) Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane for quarantine.
Guangdong’s health authorities informed Macao’s Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre that the man had taken a bus ride with a person who had had close contact with a confirmed asymptomatic carrier of the novel coronavirus in the city of Maoming.
Maoming’s health authorities reported an asymptomatic carrier of the novel coronavirus yesterday, a 47-year-old waitress working at a restaurant in Guangzhou who had served food to a 75-year-old woman, who was confirmed as a Covid-19 patient on Friday last week. The 47-year-old woman is a Maoming resident.
The 75-year-old woman from Guangzhou’s Liwan district, a new local Covid-19 case reported by the provincial capital’s health authorities last Friday, had been diagnosed with carrying the mutant strain spreading in India that is more contagious than the original novel coronavirus. Her husband has been confirmed as an asymptomatic carrier of the novel coronavirus.
According to Maoming’s health authorities, the 47-year-old served food to the 75-year-old in the restaurant in Liwan district on Wednesday last week without wearing a facemask, because of which the 47-year-old was classified as having had close contact with a confirmed Covid-19 patient.
Maoming’s health authorities then transferred the 47-year-old, who had returned to her home from Guangzhou, to a quarantine facility, where she underwent a nucleic acid test (NAT) on Saturday, the result of which was negative. The woman underwent a follow-up NAT on Monday, which tested positive for Covid-19. She has been classified as an asymptomatic carrier of the novel coronavirus as she has not come down with any Covid-19 symptoms, The Macau Post Daily reported.
The Guangdong Health Commission told Macao’s SSM yesterday afternoon that the 28-year-old male mainlander took a bus ride from Maoming to Guangzhou on Friday last week with a person who had had close contact with the 47-year-old woman, because of which the 28-year-old has been classified as having had close contact with his fellow bus passenger
The SSM found that the 28-year-old entered Macao via the joint border checkpoint in Hengqin in the early hours of yesterday. Since checking into The Londoner casino-hotel resort in Cotai, the man had remained in his guestroom, apart from eating breakfast at a restaurant in the integrated resort, before the bureau took him to the Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre yesterday afternoon where he tested negative for Covid-19 in a nucleic acid test.
The 28-year-old man has since been taken to the bureau’s Coloane Public Health Clinical Centre for quarantine and medical observation, where he will undergo medical observation.
The 28-year-old man does not pose a high Covid-19 risk to Macao, officials said, as he has tested negative for Covid-19 in a NAT, and mainland health authorities have merely classified him as “a close contact of a close contact” of an asymptomatic Covid-19 patient.
