Education Secretary Christine Choi on Wednesday said the three-year Covid pandemic was partly to blame for the record low number of top scorers in this year's Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exam.

Compared to 11 last year, only four students achieved top marks in seven subjects.

Choi said this year's DSE students had to work extra hard to keep up with their studies over the past three years, noting however that their overall performance had remained steady.

"Despite the [drop in the] number of perfect scorers, more students achieved good results in various subjects this year. So, the overall performance is more balanced," she said, after visiting a school in Kowloon Bay.

The four top scorers, meanwhile, came from three elite schools across the city.

Charlie Law from Queen's College said he’s decided to study medicine in Hong Kong.

Ku Ping-sum from St. Paul's Co-educational College also said she wants to do medicine at a local university.

"I believe that I can contribute to the Hong Kong society and we all know that the medical system in Hong Kong is actually very well developed. And I also want to contribute my own power into improve it further more. So I'm going to stay in Hong Kong and serve our own community," she said.

But her schoolmate, Terry Lam, is planning to study science at the University of Cambridge.

"Even though Hong Kong already has quite good results in some scientific fields, I think it will also be a good idea to explore what other countries or places might have to offer," he said.

Another top scorer, Eden Cheng from Good Hope School, said while she’s hoping to become a surgeon in the future, she hasn’t decided where to get her degree.

"Before I received the score sheet, I've planned for the worst... I was thinking of going to the UK because the entry requirement there is much lower when compared to Hong Kong. But now that I know my results are this good, I will have to reconsider," she said.

The four were among some 48,000 candidates who received their DSE results on Wednesday.

Around 42 percent of them have achieved the grades needed for a university place.