Health authorities said they'd noted an increase in Covid-19 infections in Hong Kong in recent days which were linked to eased social distancing measures as they reported 515 new cases on Sunday.

Chuang Shuk-kwan from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) told reporters that data such as the real-time effective reproductive number of local cases from the University of Hong Kong showed an upward trend, while several other figures remained stable.

"The proportion of RAT-positive cases is much higher than those tested positive by PCR, and we noted that at least a proportion of them have tested negative after we checked with their PCR [tests]. But all in all, even we added those who tested positive [through] PCR and RAT, we noted that the actual number seems to be increasing a bit over the few days," she said.

"The estimate of R (reproductive number) on May 28 is 1.353, it's a bit higher than one, so we did observe a slightly increasing number of cases in the past few days.

"But we also monitor the hospital admission and also the proportion of severe [cases] and deaths, et cetera, and we have not observed any changes yet."

Four clusters linked to bars in Central continued to rise, accounting for 45 of the latest cases.

An additional 27 people who had visited Shuffle and 13 more others linked to LINQ were found to be infected.

The other two bar clusters, involving Zentral and Iron Fairies, also saw more infections.

As for school clusters, Chuang noted that an outbreak at Holy Trinity College in Shek Kip Mei added one more case, taking the tally to 10.

There was also one new suspected case of the BA.2.12.1 Omicron subvariant, involving a woman, 38, who lives in Ho Man Tin. Two of her family members had earlier been infected.

Separately, the Hospital Authority said three doctors working at the intensive care unit in North District Hospital tested positive.

Also, a nurse at Queen Mary Hospital's Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology and a patient of the ward where the nurse works have been infected.

Forty-two of the newly reported cases were imported, and four more Covid patients have died.

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USEFUL LINKS
General Covid-19 situation: https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/
Covid-19 testing: https://www.communitytest.gov.hk/en/
Community Clinics for Covid-19 patients: https://bit.ly/3a4BZFE
RAT reporting platform: https://www.chp.gov.hk/ratp/
Vaccination programme: https://www.covidvaccine.gov.hk/sen/
Vaccination pass scheme: https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/vaccine-pass.html
Hotline for Covid-positive patients: 1836 115