The COVID-19 pandemic has spiked with a vengeance in Hong Kong again in the past few days as scores of people tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Some here have called it the fourth surge of the global pandemic but numbers don’t matter as much as the dangerous situation they confirm: Winter is around the corner and COVID-19 will be joined by the seasonal flu to put extra pressure on the public healthcare system in the next few months.

That means local residents must maintain a stringent personal hygiene and social-distancing regimen to avoid catching the infectious diseases; while the special administrative region’s government needs to take measures to stop the pandemic from spreading further, including a citywide universal compulsory nucleic acid test.

Community tests for the novel coronavirus are more necessary than ever because many people who tested positive for the virus are asymptomatic and there are cases with unknown sources. 

Asymptomatic infections are more dangerous because the hosts have no idea they are spreading the virus until they test positive for it.

The latest surge of positive tests suggests small-scale tests focused on those who visited “hot spots” in a specific time period may not be enough to trace all the carriers because many of them have visited different places and had contact with many other people after visiting those “hot spots”. Therefore, a citywide universal compulsory nucleic acid test for the COVID-19 pathogen should be seriously considered — and the sooner the better. It has proved to be effective in containing the coronavirus in some mainland cities.

Studies by the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at The University of Hong Kong show the instant infection rate of COVID-19 in Hong Kong has reached 1.845, meaning every novel coronavirus carrier can infect 1.8, or nearly two other, people at the same time and those two people in turn may infect another two each.

Despite many residents adapting to the “new normal” these days we cannot rule out the possibility that a massive outbreak may happen anytime, unless we immediately take the most drastic measures to contain its spread. After all, the current state of COVID-19 here proves most preventive measures so far have failed to contain the virus. It is time for the SAR government to take decisive action.

There is good evidence that the vast majority of residents understand and support such a drastic measure, as indicated by a recent survey which interviewed more than 1,500 residents, 70 percent of whom supported mandatory testing for all residents. Hong Kong must act now because it cannot afford to waste more time treating the symptoms instead of tackling the cause.