Where are Hong Kong’s Imported Covid-19 Cases Coming From?
On 16 April, Hong Kong reported 17 new cases of Covid-19 for a total of 11,636. In investigating the new cases, the Centre for Health and Protection (CHP) found that from the 17 confirmed cases found, 6 cases were epidemiologically linked with local cases while 11 were imported cases. This reflects a trend of higher imported cases as compared to locally traced cases since the fourth wave subsided in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has imported a total of 39 positive Covid-19 cases within a span of seven days, according to data collected on April 14. Although the number of active cases in Hong Kong has been in decline over the past month, imported cases have made for a larger proportion of these active cases then locally found cases.
The below tweet shows a comparison of local and imported cases in Hong Kong.
The government’s data on the ‘List of Flights/Trains/Ships/Vehicles Taken by Confirmed or Probable Cases of COVID-19’ indicates where the people testing positive for Covid-19 in Hong Kong are travelling from. The data presented in the map below indicates probable imported cases in Hong Kong from April 2 — April 14.
However, it is likely that some passengers have to transit or undergo quarantine in a different country before travelling to Hong Kong, so this may not be an accurate representation of where the imported cases are coming from.
As such, the CHP also collects data on the home countries or the citizenship of the people testing positive upon arrival to Hong Kong. The data presented in the map below shows the nationalities of the 39 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in Hong Kong in the last seven days.
An analysis of the number of cases coming into Hong Kong shows that many of them are primarily coming from the South Asian and South-East Asian region.
The highest number of imported cases were found to be arriving to Hong Kong from New Delhi — just over 20 in April.
Similarly, when looking at the nationalities of the people who make up the imported case numbers, a majority of them are Indian.
Ultimately, this can be attributed to the large population of India, and the increase in active Covid-19 cases in India over the past month.
India became the country with the world’s second highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, surpassing Brazil, and now second only to the United States. India reported 13.5 million confirmed cases, as the country faces a second wave of the virus, with confirmed daily infections reaching an all-time high of 168,912 on April 12.
This can give a likely explanation for the high number of imported cases coming to Hong Kong from India in the past month. The maps below show the number of Covid-19 confirmed cases and deaths in India using data collected from The New York Times and Indian Government Statistics.
However, it is also important to look into travel regulations and safety measures being adopted by the different countries, as this plays a huge role in cases being imported into different countries via air travel.
