Government personnel wearing protective gear stand guard on a street in Yau Ma Tei district in Hong Kong, Jan 27, 2021. (CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY)

HONG KONG - One COVID-19 infection was found after Hong Kong’s health authorities tested around 330 residents of a cordoned-off area in Yau Ma Tei in an 11-hour drive that ended 6 am on Wednesday.

The exercise, second of its kind, was launched at 7 pm on Tuesday without any prior notice to premises at No.9-27 Pitt Street and No.3 Tung On Street. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday morning that such testing programs would remain confidential until the last minute in order to ensure that people would not leave the target area beforehand so as to dodge testing.

The government hopes this temporary inconvenience will completely cut the local transmission chains in the district and ease residents’ worries and fear, so that they will regain confidence in resuming social and business activities in the area, and return to a normal life.

Hong Kong government

READ MORE: Lam: Govt will do best to plug test evasion loopholes

Eight temporary specimen collection stations were established in the area and target residents had regular nasal and throat swabbing as well as rapid antigen tests which return results in 30 minutes, the government said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The government hopes this temporary inconvenience will completely cut the local transmission chains in the district and ease residents’ worries and fear, so that they will regain confidence in resuming social and business activities in the area, and return to a normal life,” the statement reads.

Three hundred and eighty personnel of the Hong Kong Police Force, the Home Affairs Department and Yau Tsim Mong and Sham Shui Po districts offices helped conduct the targeted testing.

The officers also visited 306 households, of which no one in 93 answered the door. Pledging follow-up action, the government said it did not have details of the situation but the flats were probably vacant because the residents had already been quarantined.

Workers clean a street in Yau Ma Tei district in Hong Kong, Jan 27, 2021, after a restriction was lifted in the area. (CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY)

The government stressed that people who had visited the target area in the past two weeks are still subject to mandatory testing even they had not been present during the 11-hour operation.

ALSO READ: HK lifts restriction in Jordan after testing 7,000 people

“The government’s next goal is to make good use of our anti-epidemic tools to prevent community outbreaks and gradually achieve ‘zero infections’,” wrote Lam.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the government announced in a separate statement that mandatory testing notices had been issued to 39 more residential buildings of which 20 were in Sham Shui Po district.

The target buildings are mostly situated in areas where the government applies stricter testing rules. Thirty-one buildings were issued notices because their sewage samples had continuously tested positive for the coronavirus.