Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng announced today that all entertainment businesses such as cinemas, karaoke bars, saunas, discos and massage parlours will be closed from midnight today in response to yesterday's confirmation of a COVID-19 Delta variant family cluster involving four patients.
However, Ho stressed that Macau's over three dozen casinos will remain open, pointing out that both gaming workers and gamblers are required to wear facemasks which is not the case in other entertainment venues.
The government shut Macau's casinos for 15 days in February last year. Casinos are Macau's main breadwinner, generating about half of the local GDP and over three quarters of the government's receipts.
The testing campaign is slated to end at 9 a.m. on Saturday
The NAT campaign for the whole population began at 9 a.m. today. The government also announced that from this afternoon everyone needs to book his or her NAT appointment. In the first few hours of the campaign walk-in testing was possible but it resulted in some "confusion", officials acknowledged.
Macau has a population of about 680,000 including tens of thousands of non-resident workers.
Ho said during a lengthy press conference at Government Headquarters he expected Macau to "return to normality" within 14 days.
Nucleic acid testing is mandatory for all those who plan to leave Macau, want to take public transport or enter a wide range of premises such as restaurants and Public Administration offices. The testing status will be indicated on the Macau Health Code.
According to official statistics, 180,000 people had booked their nucleic acid tests by this afternoon.
A list of the 41 testing stations has been published by the government in Chinese, Portuguese and English.
