HONG KONG — The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government will continue to steadfastly implement the strategy of guarding against the importation of COVID-19 cases and a resurgence of domestic infections even if the epidemic is on the decline, Chief Executive of the HKSAR Carrie Lam said on April 20 when meeting with mainland experts.

Lam on April 20 met with Director of the National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Kan Biao, together with the mainland expert team led by him, who visited Hong Kong to support the anti-COVID-19 epidemic work. She listened to the team's views after their days of visits covering various fronts of the HKSAR's anti-epidemic fight.

During the meeting, Lam said Hong Kong's fifth wave of the epidemic has shown a gradual downtrend after reaching the peak in early March, but the HKSAR government will not let down its guard and will help the community ride out the epidemic early with risks duly managed.

Lam expressed her gratitude to the mainland expert team which had, over the past two weeks since their arrival in Hong Kong on April 7, been tirelessly meeting with members of the HKSAR's anti-epidemic team.

Lam extended her sincere gratitude to the central government for sending five batches of mainland experts to Hong Kong since the onset of the fifth wave of the epidemic.

Having regard to Hong Kong's actual circumstances and epidemic development, the experts have offered objective and pragmatic views in such areas as epidemiology, clinical treatment and Chinese medicine to assist the HKSAR in reducing infections, severe cases and deaths, adopting more precise, stronger and more targeted measures on certain groups of people, premises and areas, and according priority to supporting the elderly, Lam said.

"With the staunch support of the central government and the concerted efforts of different sectors of society, the HKSAR government has considerably enhanced its handling capacities in different parts of the anti-epidemic chain," she said.

On April 20, Hong Kong registered 330 new COVID-19 cases by nucleic acid tests, and 338 additional positive cases through self-reported rapid antigen tests, official data showed.