Maid Found Infected after New Test

Jane Cheung

A 32-year-old Filipino maid of a confirmed patient has tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus – a day after she tested negative.

This comes as the government expands its surveillance to test all feverish patients with respiratory symptoms or chest infections attending general outpatient clinics and accident and emergency departments at public hospitals from today.

This is aimed at detecting, treating and isolating Covid-19 cases early to lower the risk of the virus spreading.

The helper works for a 67-year-old woman – the 52nd confirmed case who was infected after a January 26 dinner at the Star Seafood Restaurant in North Point.

Five of the 29 people at the dinner, including the senior’s 39-year-old son and her 75-year-old brother-in-law, were also infected.

The helper did not attend the dinner and it is surmised that she instead was infected at the home where she works, said Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Centre for Health Protection’s communicable disease branch.

Chuang said the discrepancy between the helper’s two tests could be because of a low virus load in the specimen collected for the first test, adding that it had been over a week after the maid first felt unwell on February 2.

“Maybe the specimen was not collected from the right spot,” she said. “The test has a high sensitivity but results are subject to other factors too.”

Chuang said around 10 other helpers who were with the infected maid for an hour at the outdoor area outside city hall in Central on February 9 are being traced to see if they have symptoms.

“All of them were wearing masks and they did not have meals together,” she said.

Chuang said the helper suffered from a fever and a cough on February 2, prompting her to take medication on her own, and has since recovered from the discomfort.

“After her employer was tested positive last Thursday, the helper was considered a close contact and sent to a hospital for tests, whose results came out past midnight on Friday and showed she was negative for the coronavirus,” she said.

“But doctors found shadows on her lungs from chest X-rays. They arranged for her to go through a computer scan on Saturday, and she showed signs of pneumonia,” Chuang said.

Doctors subsequently arranged another virus test and results came back positive yesterday.

Asked if the helper’s case means patients carrying the coronavirus could have been let go and are walking around the community, Chuang said if a patient who tested negative shows continuous symptoms and pneumonia that “cannot be explained,” doctors would arrange retests as double confirmation.

The new case takes the total of confirmed patients to 61, but this is likely to increase further after a 58-year-old man who visited his wife and daughter in Zhongshan in the mainland between January 23 and February 2 tested preliminary positive.

The man, who lives on Hong Ning Road in Kwun Tong, is now in isolation in United Christian Hospital, Chuang said, adding that he consulted a private doctor four times before he was admitted.

The Hospital Authority’s chief manager for quality and standards, Lau Ka-hin, said the extended criteria will enable “early detection, isolation and treatment” while preventing patients from spreading the coronavirus in the community.

“We see more cases without pneumonia or only very mild respiratory symptoms, they can’t be detected until their conditions deteriorate,” he said.

jane.cheung@singtaonewscorp.com

Source: www.thestandard.com.hk