Four new coronavirus infections were recorded in Hong Kong today, with all patients reported to have recently returned from the UK.

The Center for Health Protection’s head of communicable diseases, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, said in a briefing that the patients, aged 13-55, comprised three females and one male, all of whom had recently returned from England. Cases 1019, 1020, and 1021 took the same flight back to Hong Kong and arrived last night. They all gave deep throat saliva samples at AsiaWorld-Expo, where they stayed until their results came back.

Case 1022, a 20-year-old female student, came back to Hong Kong on March 21. She completed a 14-day self-quarantine in a hotel, and began experiencing headaches on April 11. She went to a private hospital on April 13 and gave a deep throat saliva sample on the next day that eventually tested positive. She remains at the Pamela Youde for treatment and observation.

Shuang noted that a few cases, including the fourth patient, have taken longer than 14 days to show symptoms. “Now that Hong Kong has recorded over 1,000 cases, it is normal to see a few patients whose incubation periods are a little longer than normal,” she said.

Today is the sixth consecutive day that Hong Kong’s number of new COVID-19 infections has been in the single digits, but health officials have warned citizens not to fall into a false sense of security. On Tuesday, CHP controller Wong Ka-hing emphasized that the lower number of cases does not mean that the outbreak is “under control”, and urged everyone to continue practicing good hygiene and social distancing.

“The lower number of new infections has perhaps eased everyone’s worries a little, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get slack. As we have seen before, the virus can come back. The one method [of containment] that has proven to work is prevention, so we must all continue to protect ourselves and be careful not to catch the virus,” Wong said at the time.

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