Testing kits delivery a comfort for HK care homes

People were advised to stay at home when Typhoon Higos brought heavy rains to Hong Kong on Tuesday. But Irene Chik Wing-shan braved the downpour, carrying two loaded Ikea bags without an umbrella, to deliver a special package to people in need.

The young woman, clad in a face shield and a mask, and with sunburnt skin along the edges of her red tank top, trekked along the city's mountainous roads with her ponytail swinging in the rain. She snaked through the lanes of Tai Po, New Territories to deliver bottles for nucleic acid tests for COVID-19 to care homes.

"We have to keep going, people are waiting for us," Chik said, as she swayed in a van before splashing through rain-soaked streets toward her next destinations. She needed to finish 18 deliveries before noon to be in time for her afternoon schedule and collect samples from 18 care homes in To Kwa Wan in central Kowloon.

Chik, with her top soaked from a mixture of sweat and rain, walked the elderly residents and staffers through the process of sample collection, over and over, in a gentle but upbeat manner.

Chik is a lab technician at Sunrise Diagnostic Centre, a joint venture of genomics technology firm BGI Genomics in Hong Kong. She is among 10 technicians from the company who have been distributing and collecting bottles for COVID-19 tests for care homes, which accommodate the most vulnerable group in society.

Every morning at 7 am since mid-July, she and nine other colleagues arrive at the office and begin the day loading around 8,000 test kits into 10 vans. They deliver the kits to more than 200 care homes in Hong Kong, like a girl scouts' cookie sale. By 7 pm, they have returned with another 8,000 kits containing samples from the kits handed out the day before. Colleagues test the samples in search of those with asymptomatic infections.