During Monday’s press conference, SSM Control of Communicable Diseases and Surveillance of Diseases Department Coordinator Leong Iek Hou gave detailed information about Macau’s 11th COVID-19 patient’s travel history during her holiday in Portugal and after returning to Macau.
Leong said that the 26-year-old patient, an Air Macau flight attendant, worked until January 28 before starting her holiday. She left Macau and travelled to Porto with her fiancé – a local Portuguese national – for a family visit on January 30. During her holiday in Portugal, she stayed at her fiancé’s family home. During her stay in Portugal, she met her fiancé’s friends and relatives.
While Sunday night’s statement referred to the man as the flight attendant’s boyfriend, Monday’s press conference described him as her fiancé.
According to Leong, the woman travelled from Porto to Lisbon by train on March 10 and returned to Porto on March 11. The couple caught flight EK198 from Porto to Dubai on Thursday, with the woman sitting in seat 17B of the Emirates plane, after which they took flight EK380 from Dubai to Hong Kong and the woman sat in seat 31J.
According to Leong, the pair returned to Macau at 00:21 on Saturday from Hong Kong via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB), after which they returned to their flat in Macau, Block 5 of the luxury residential estate One Oasis in Coloane, by taxi.
According to Leong, the woman came down with a “slight” cough at midday on Saturday. In the afternoon, the woman travelled to Taipa on a shuttle bus run by Oasis. In Taipa, the woman had meals in two restaurants, bought items from a pharmacy, and accompanied her fiancé when he had a hair cut in a barbers shop. Her fiancé drove back to the flat, after which they had dinner there.
According to Leong, the couple had breakfast in the flat on Sunday morning, after which a part-time cleaner arrived at the flat. The cleaner – a Filipina – had a chat with the South Korean woman for 10 minutes, at a distance of over one metre. Afterwards, the couple went out.
The flight attendant came down with a fever and felt dizzy on Sunday afternoon so her fiancé drove her to a private clinic in Taipa where her temperature was 37.5 Celsius. The woman then went to the emergency department run by the public hospital in Taipa, where staff collected a sample for a COVID-19 test. Afterwards, her fiancé drove her home to wait for the result of the test, according to Leong.
On Sunday night, the result confirmed that she has been infected with the novel coronavirus so that she was taken from the flat to the public hospital’s isolation ward by ambulance for treatment.
Lei Wai Seng, a clinical director of the public hospital, said that the patient was in good condition on Monday. A CT scan image showed that the patient does not suffer from pneumonia, Lei said.
Leong said that the woman’s fiancé, four passengers sitting near the woman during the flight from Dubai to Hong Kong, a friend of the woman in Macau, and the part-time Filipina cleaner have been classified as having been in close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient – the Air Macau flight attendant. Three of the four passengers are local students enrolled in Portugal. All of them have been taken to the Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane for a 14-day quarantine.
Meanwhile, Inês Chan Lou, who heads the Licensing and Inspection Department of the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO), announced that the special measure transporting Macau residents arriving at Hong Kong’s airport from Europe – a measure announced by the Macau government on Sunday – will now also cover Macau residents arriving at Hong Kong’s airport from the United States, as the Hong Kong government has announced that it will impose 14-days quarantine on all those arriving there from the United States starting from Thursday.
SSM Director Lei Chin Ion acknowledged that many local residents are disappointed that Macau has confirmed a new COVID-19 case after having had no new cases for 39 consecutive days. Lei said that as the disease has now become a pandemic, it was unavoidable that Macau will have imported cases.
(The Macau Post Daily/Macau News)
PHOTO © Government Information Bureau (GCS)
