COVID-19 tally exceeds 3,000 in HK

City's short-term outlook cloudy as SAR reveals economy contracted 9 percent

Hong Kong's COVID-19 tally soared to 3,002 on Wednesday, as 118 cases were added to the city's eight-day streak of triple-digit new coronavirus infections.

One-third of the total was recorded over the past eight days, while it took the city six months to record its first 2,000 infections. Five imported cases and 113 locally transmitted cases were reported on Wednesday.

A 76-year-old woman who died on Wednesday morning became the city's 24th COVID-linked fatality. She is believed to have contracted the virus in a medical ward at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where a cluster of seven patients were infected.

Seventeen deaths, or 70 percent of the total, have been recorded since July 13, as the city's worst wave of COVID-19 outbreak, which began earlier this month, hit multiple elderly care homes and public housing estates.

Four more residents and two more workers at an elderly care home in Tuen Mun were confirmed infected on Wednesday, bringing the total cases in this cluster to 36, second only to another home in Tsz Wan Shan, where 45 patients and six deaths were recorded.

Clusters also continued to emerge at public hospitals.

On Wednesday, four support workers at Princess Margaret Hospital preliminarily tested positive for the virus, three of whom had worked in the same ward.

Health authorities said about 80 others in the city have also preliminarily tested positive.

Meanwhile, a hotline service will be launched for COVID-19 patients awaiting hospital admission.

So far, about 380 patients have been transferred to second-tier facilities since the occupancy rate of isolation wards has approached 80 percent, nearing capacity.

To ease the pressure on isolation beds, the AsiaWorld-Expo－an exhibition center being converted into a community treatment facility－is expected to admit stable patients as early as Saturday.

The newly confirmed cases also included 54 people who were diagnosed with the disease after gatherings with friends. The report of these cases came on the same day that the city's strictest social distancing rules to date took effect, including a blanket ban on dining in restaurants.