Two children — aged 4 and 8 — who tested positive for COVID-19 died in Hong Kong on Monday.
Authorities also reported 280 more deaths of coronavirus patients from Feb. 25 to Sunday.
Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, Sara Ho, the Hospital Authority’s chief manager for patient safety and risk management, said the eight-year-old girl had thyroid problems.
She said the girl went to a private hospital on Sunday for treatment of a fever and slight headache.
She did a rapid antigen test there and got a positive result. After getting medication, she went home.
But her situation worsened on Monday morning and she fell unconscious. She was sent to Queen Mary Hospital.
Despite efforts to resuscitate her, she passed away at 8:28am.
Ho said the case had been referred to the Coroner’s Court for further investigation.
The chief manager said the other child death involved a four-year-old girl who had a congenital heart problem.
She was sent to Queen Mary Hospital at 2am on Monday as she was vomiting and had slow reactions.
Her heart had stopped beating when she was admitted. After CPR, her heartbeat resumed.
But her heart stopped again around 8am and she passed away at 9:35am.
Her PCR test result was positive.
Both patients received one dose of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine last month.
The authority recorded 161 deaths on Sunday. They were aged between 29 and 102, while 147 were above 65 years old.
A total of 126 were not vaccinated, while 21 received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 13 got two jabs and one had three doses.
There was also a backlog of 119 deaths from Feb. 25 to Saturday, which were not announced earlier due to a delay in reporting. Their ages ranged from 50 to 101.
Meanwhile, the Centre for Health Protection announced on Monday the launch of a new online platform for residents to report positive results of self-administered rapid antigen tests at 6pm. The launch has been delayed for days.
This came as the center reported 25,150 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, with all but 32 locally transmitted. That’s the fourth consecutive day of drop in daily cases, from the record high of 56,827 on Thursday.
But Edwin Tsui, the centre’s controller, said the numbers might not tell the whole story.
“It’s possible some residents are using the rapid antigen tests in place of PCR tests, so these residents are waiting for our platform and reporting to us later. We need to look at the figures [of the rapid tests later],” he said.
“We expect there will be a surge of reports from today because after we announced the initiative of recognizing the RAT [rapid antigen test] as a laboratory testing result on Feb. 26, we noted that there are many people waiting for this platform.”
Those with a positive rapid test result can visit www.chp.gov.hk/ratp to report their details, including personal information and that of their family, any symptoms they are having, the condition of their household environment, a photo of the test result and whether they need to stay in community isolation facilities.
Tsui urged people to report their cases if they are positive so that authorities can give them assistance.
He added there is liability if anyone provides inaccurate or intentional false information.
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