The Macau government announced Friday that it had detected no new cases of COVID-19 in the community in the previous calendar day – the first time since this outbreak began on 18 June that the city had achieved a single day “zero-COVID” result in the community. It was also the first time that the total number of cases detected had fallen to single digits with five cases found among people in hotel quarantine.
Those cases bring the total number since the start of the outbreak to 1,800.
As of 8am on Friday 22 July, a total of 22,525 people have been followed up by the government in their epidemiological investigations. These include 3,518 close contacts, 12,215 “non-core” close contacts, 1,340 “sub-close” contacts, 256 general contacts and 783 accompanying persons.
The decline in cases comes as Macau prepares to enter into a two-week “consolidation period” starting from midnight tonight, with casinos among a range of businesses permitted to reopen – albeit with only 50% of normal staffing levels allowed.
The Gaming Supervision and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) issued a press release on Friday morning in which it said, “The DICJ has thoroughly cleaned and disinfected all casino facilities, reminded staff to wear masks of KN95 or above, [check for] green health codes and [take] body temperature tests upon entry, and [keep] gaming table seats and gaming machines at an appropriate distance from each other.
“The DICJ will continue to closely monitor the casinos, step up epidemic prevention inspections and coordinate with concessionaires to adjust epidemic prevention measures in accordance with the latest epidemic prevention guidelines.”
