The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) said on Thursday it is stepping up efforts to fight mosquitoes after their breeding rate reached "extensive" proportions in more areas, with Tai Wai especially seeing a spike.

The move came days after the FEHD released the third-batch results of its Gravidtrap Indexes, which look at how many specific monitoring devices are found with breeding mosquitoes, for 19 surveyed areas.

According to the results, six of the areas – Ho Man Tin, Yau Tong and Cha Kwo Ling, Lam Tin and Sau Mau Ping, Wong Tai Sin West, Tai Wai, as well as Ma Wan and Sham Tseng – saw their index exceeding 20 percent, indicating the distribution of mosquitoes is "extensive" and requires "alerts".

Tai Wai was found to have the highest mosquito breeding rate at 46 percent.

Commenting on the findings, senior superintendent Hung Sai-kit said the latest levels of the Gravidtrap Indexes were actually "more or less similar" to that in the past, though last year's situation was better possibly because of less rainfall.

Officials, he added, are rolling out more measures in regions rampant with mosquitoes, especially Tai Wai, after inspecting private housing estates, housing compounds, schools and parks.

"We found there were some plots or housing compounds with mosquito breeding sites, and so we immediately took enforcement action," he said on an RTHK radio show.

"We have also dealt with some management companies. For example, if we find standing water that encourages mosquitoes to breed, we issue notices to them, requiring them to drain the water as soon as possible," he added.

Hung also noted that typically the rates for measuring the presence of mosquitoes would spike between April and September and peak in April and May.

He added that authorities have been using new traps, large sprayers and other technologies, such as the robotic dogs, to fight mosquitoes.

Also speaking on the show was Chan Tan-tan, a district councillor at Sha Tin West, who noted that Tai Wai's spike might be due to there being more construction projects, such as road and building construction, recently.

"Some construction sites are prone to accumulate water, which would then become breeding sites for mosquitoes. We have received reports not only from ordinary citizens but also construction workers, saying that there are really a lot of mosquitoes," he said.

"There are also bamboo baskets or holes in water barriers on roads that could also accumulate water and might be overlooked by the cleaning and management firms.

"As a result, they became breeding grounds for mosquitoes."

Chan called on authorities to use more advanced technologies to control the mosquito population, such as drones or artificial intelligence-equipped tools, pointing to their use in Singapore and certain regions in the Greater Bay Area.


Edited by Edmond Fong