The dynamic zero-COVID goal is close at hand, and identifying the remaining local micro-clusters during Macau’s “relatively static” movement of people will be the key to reach this goal, a physician told The Macau Post Daily in an online interview yesterday.
Dr Cheong Io Hong from the Public Health School at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who specialises in infectious diseases, described the local government’s COVID-19 prevention and control measures as “accurate”, as they have brought the number of new daily cases within the community down to just a single figure.
However, the government’s pandemic prevention and control measures tend to target large groups of people rather than the individual clusters – which would require the government to spend time looking at the epidemiology background of these individuals case by case.
“It is likely that these clusters are coming from those who are still commuting to work or shopping for essential groceries, like a fish that has slipped through the net”, Cheong noted.
As the government has shortened the duration required for the mandatory citywide nucleic acid tests (NATs) by cutting its 24-hour service, Cheong said that there is still hope for a quicker identification of the potential cases.
Cheong also shared his thoughts on why these micro-clusters still exist: “Imagine you have a fire in your house and the water system only kicks in every two days. While the 98 percent of the fire has been put out, the 2 percent still remains. However, the surroundings are all wet, allowing the fire to burn at a very steady slow rate. By the time it starts to glow again, the water system kicks in again. Therefore, the water system is working in a slow, repetitive cycle to put out this fire.”
Cheong said that the above principle can also be applied to what will happen this week, adding that from the recent case data, “we are heading downstairs”, i.e., a decline with minor fluctuations (orange line in the graph).
Cheong explained that this is because the mandatory citywide NAT is “ahead of the virus spread”, while it also still gives COVID-19 the chance to spread, but the virus should be “intercepted” by the mandatory tests for all people in Macau every other day.
Cheong added that the government could only reach the zero goal if it takes “extremely precise action” against these micro-clusters (blue line in the graph).
But there could be light at the end of the tunnel, he said.
This graph provided by infectious diseases expert Dr Cheong Io Hong shows his forecast on this week’s number of confirmed community cases in Macau.
Graph: Dr Cheong
