A new cluster of COVID-19 cases is emerging in an international kindergarten in Hong Kong, with five students and one teacher infected with the virus in the past two days.
Authorities ordered the suspension of two classes in the school from now until Friday.
Albert Au, the Centre for Health Protection’s principal medical and health officer, said on Tuesday that St Catherine’s International Kindergarten in Kowloon Tong reported four coronavirus cases on Monday after they tested positive via rapid antigen tests (RAT).
They are from an afternoon class, which has 29 students.
The four started developing symptoms on Sunday and Monday. They last went to school the previous Friday.
Au said the school reported two more cases on Tuesday morning, involving a teacher from the afternoon class and a student in a morning class.
The teacher started having mild upper respiratory symptoms on Friday, but had a negative RAT result.
The teacher tested negative again via the RAT on Monday and continued to go to school.
Because of the cluster of positive results, the teacher did a PCR test on Monday, which came back positive.
The student from the morning class started developing symptoms and tested positive via the RAT on Tuesday.
The classroom used by the morning class is the same as that for the afternoon class that has four infected students. The teacher who tested positive also teaches the morning class.
Lessons will be suspended until this Friday for both classes, involving 58 students in total.
During this period of time, they have to continue doing RAT at home every day.
Au noted that the kindergarten has more than 1,000 students.
“We cannot rule out that [the four] students contracted [the virus] in the classroom as they developed symptoms around the same time,” said the medical and health officer.
He added that a lot of students from these classes are not vaccinated against COVID-19, so to play it safe, the center recommended the school to disinfect the classroom and the students to stay at home.
Separately, the city reported 250 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, 34 of which are imported.
That brings the total number of coronavirus cases in the fifth wave to 1,198,205.
There were no new deaths reported.
