New virus outbreak in Hong Kong: Hong Kong follows a new tactic to battle the second wave of COVID-19.

New virus outbreak in Hong Kong: Hong Kong follows a new tactic to battle the second wave of COVID-19

 Hong Kong strengthened social distancing rules on Thursday to resist a new coronavirus outbreak in a city that had extensively managed to defeat local transmissions in recent months.

Health officials have been confused by a clump of new infections that have quickly developed through the tightly compressed business core of 7.5 million people. The city registered 34 locally spread coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest daily tally in more than three months.

“Now that the pandemic is coming back, I appeal to everyone to reduce outings, gatherings, and dining together,” health minister Sophia Chan reported reporters.

Authorities declared a reintroduction of limits to how many people can group, a repeat of steps practiced earlier in the year that helped extinguish the coronavirus outbreak. A maximum of eight people can sit together at restaurants while bars, pubs, and nightclubs are limited to four people per table.

Catering businesses can only function at 60 percent of their normal size. Gyms and karaoke rooms must have no more than 16 people per room or facility. Hong Kong was one of the first places to be hit by the coronavirus earlier this year after it broke out of central China.

But authorities obtained remarkable headway against the disease, supported by a population with earlier experience of outbreaks who immediately adopted social distancing and facemasks. The city has recorded 1,365 cases of the disease after January, with seven deaths.

However, the novel outbreak displays the stubborn toughness of the coronavirus, even in a city with a solid record of ending its spread. New virus clumps began to develop in the past two days, including at an elderly care home that reported at least 32 cases.

At least 12 new infections in the last five days have been listed as unknown in origin, indicating authorities are striving to work out how the infection is expanding in those cases. Last month, Hong Kong loosened its social distancing rules to permit public meetings of up to 50 people,  scrap customer restrictions for restaurants, and reopen theme parks.''