Macau mourned one more COVID-19 death yesterday, an 88-year-old chronically ill woman, raising the city’s novel coronavirus death toll to three.
Lei Wai Seng, a clinical director of the public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre, announced the latest COVID-19 fatality during yesterday evening’s daily press conference about the viral menace.
According to Lei, the woman was taken to the Health Bureau’s (SSM) Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane for isolation treatment after she tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday last week.
The woman suffered various chronic diseases such as severe diabetes, heart disease, and aortic dissection (a serious condition in which a tear occurs in the inner layer of the body’s main artery), Lei said.
Lei underlined that the woman had been prescribed antiviral medicines instantly after she started isolation treatment. The woman came down with serious complications from her diabetes on Monday, Lei said, adding that her condition still did not improve after intensive treatment.
According to Lei, the senior citizen’s family members told doctors that they did not want her to receive invasive medical treatment.
Consequently, Lei said, the doctors gave her antibiotics and other medicines that aimed to treat her complications.
However, Lei said, the woman’s condition still did not improve, and she died at around 1 p.m. yesterday.
Yesterday’s fatality came after Macau reported its first two COVID-19 deaths on Sunday last week. Both were chronically ill female senior citizens, aged 100 and 94 respectively, who lived in the same nursing home.
Lei noted yesterday that all three of Macau’s COVID-19 fatalities were chronically ill senior citizens, urging senior citizens to refrain from leaving home with the aim of minimising their risk of getting infected with COVID-19.
Outbreak tally rises by 57 to 1,583, 276 seniors infected
The latest tally of Macau’s current COVID-19 outbreak has increased by 57 to 1,583, according to a Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre statement yesterday morning. The 57 new locally transmitted cases were detected between 00:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on Monday, raising the outbreak tally from 1,526 as of Sunday night to 1,583 as of Monday night.
The current outbreak’s latest tally of 1,583 includes the three COVID-19 fatalities.
During yesterday’s press conference, Leong Iek Hou, who heads the Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Division of the Health Bureau (SSM), revealed that the current outbreak’s latest tally includes 276 senior citizens aged 60 or over, comprising 165 seniors aged between 60 and 69, 76 seniors aged between 70 and 79, 25 seniors aged between 80 and 89, and 10 seniors aged between 90 and 100.
Yesterday morning’s statement said that while 33 of the 57 new local cases reported on Monday were detected among COVID-19 carriers subject to management and control measures, namely lockdowns and hotel quarantine, the other 24 cases were detected in the community, comprising six close contacts of previously reported COVID-19 cases, 14 cases detected by mass nucleic acid tests (NATs) and among high-risk key groups of people, and four cases detected among other individuals.
Leong said during the press conference that 577 of the latest tally of 1,583 cases have been classified as confirmed COVID-19 cases as they had come down with symptoms, while the other 1,006 cases have been classified as asymptomatic cases as they had not developed any symptoms.
Leong also said that a new cluster was detected yesterday, raising the latest number of identified clusters to 19. At the time of yesterday evening’s press conference, Leong said, the new 19th cluster consisted of 15 people from a residential estate near the Barrier Gate checkpoint.
Yesterday was the second day of the local government’s seven-day special measures during which all businesses in Macau must close except those essential for maintaining civil society’s normal functioning or residents’ daily lives, and everyone must stay at home unless going to work, buying daily necessities, or going out for other necessary tasks or urgent reasons, such as going to NAT stations for their mandatory tests or going to healthcare facilities to seek medical treatment.
According to the seven-day special measures, which are implemented based on an executive order by Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng promulgated in the Official Gazette (BO) on Saturday, everyone must wear a facemask when going out, while all adults must wear a KN95 facemask or those of higher standards. The special measures took effect at 00:00 Monday and are slated to end at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday.
Anyone violating the order, including those failing to wear a KN95 facemask or those of higher standards when going out, faces up to two years in jail or a hefty fine.
The government has said that the seven-day order is a “static management” measure that aims to minimise the city’s movement of people as much as possible, i.e., enabling the city to get into a state of “relatively static” movement of people. The government said underlined that such a state alongside frequent rounds of mandatory citywide COVID-19 nucleic acid tests will enable Macau to eventually reach “zero cases in the community”.
No facemask while driving?
During yesterday evening’s press conference, Senior Unitary Police Service (SPU) officer Cheong Kin Ian said that as of 3 p.m. yesterday, officers of various law enforcement agencies and inspectors of other various public entities had given 810 violators of the executive order an oral warning, adding that the violations included doing exercises in public areas, smoking in the street (which means that the smoker doesn’t wear his or her facemask properly), and failing to wear a facemask.
Cheong also said that since Monday’s commencement of the implementation of the executive order, law enforcement agencies had booked nine people for violating the order.
Cheong and Public Security Police (PSP) PR officer Lei Tak Fai said that officers of law enforcement agencies will normally give a warning first to those who have merely carelessly violated the order or those who have violated under less serious circumstances, while they will strictly carry out law enforcement of the order for those who have deliberately or obviously violated the order, i.e., booking them.
Furthermore, Lei said that drivers can choose not to wear a facemask provided that he or she closes all windows while driving and that the vehicle does not have any passengers.
However, Lei said that the drivers must wear a facemask if he or she chooses to open the windows even when the vehicles do not have any passengers. If the vehicles have passengers, Lei said, all inside must wear a facemask – regardless of whether the windows are closed.
2 more quarantine hotels
Meanwhile, Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) official Liz Lam Tong Hou announced during the press conference that two more hotels in Cotai, Studio City Hotel and Broadway Hotel, will be used as quarantine hotels for COVID-19 medical observation from today. According to Lam, the two additional quarantine hotels can provide around 680 and 235 rooms respectively.
Meanwhile, according to a Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre statement, as of 3 p.m. yesterday, 182,404 people had had their swabs taken for COVID-19 tests under the ongoing mandatory citywide NAT drive, 32,952 of whom had come up with a negative result. No positive results had been detected as of 3 p.m. yesterday, according to the statement.
The ongoing round of mass nucleic acid tests is the current COVID-19 outbreak’s eighth one, which started at 9 a.m. yesterday and will end at 6 p.m. today.
Lei Wai Seng, a clinical director of the public Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre, addresses yesterday’s press conference about the city’s current COVID-19 outbreak.
Photo: Tony Wong
