Thousands Queue Up On Day Two Of Macau's Mass Testing

Thousands of Macau residents queued up on Thursday to get checked for Covid, on the second day of a mandatory territory-wide testing programme.

At around 10am, queues ranging from dozens to around 2,500 people formed outside 41 testing stations.

An elderly woman who got tested at Macau Forum in the morning said she was happy the whole process just took her only half an hour.

"It's better than yesterday... I went to Pui Ching [School] yesterday but didn't dare to line up. I would have needed to wait for at least four hours," she said.

Meanwhile, a visitor surnamed Cheung said she got tested on Wednesday but hadn't received her result. She said she was worried she wouldn't be able to go back to Guangzhou on Thursday as planned if it took longer than 12 hours for the result to come back.

"We checked out this morning but couldn't go across the border, because there aren't any [test result] records," she said.

A public administration scholar at the University of Macau, Eilo Yu, said it is a challenge for Macau to test all 680,000 residents in three days, especially when both the authorities and the people have let their guard down a bit following a long period of zero infections.

Macau authorities ordered the tests after a family of four were confirmed to have the more infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Officials said by Thursday afternoon some 345,000 people had been tested, with more tests to be carried out on Friday.