Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Centre for Health Protection’s communicable disease branch, thanked the public for their patience and cooperation on the Covid curbs over the past two and a half years.

“I hope everyone can keep up that way and work hard so that we can all resume our normal lives soon,” Chuang said.

“Citizens have learned a lot of useful anti-infection measures, like wearing a mask and washing their hands, which successfully reduced the number of cases for other upper-respiratory diseases, including the flu,” Chuang also said.

“I hope this is the last Covid-19 press conference and want to take this chance to wish everyone good health and happy lives.”

She called on people to report their infections and follow the government’s order to undergo quarantine. She didn’t specify the threshold for health authorities to resume staging the daily Covid-19 briefing.

Chuang reported 5,038 local infections, including 1,168 confirmed PCR tests and 3,870 verified positive cases, and 152 imported cases today.

When asked if Covid has become endemic, she said it depends on global developments as a whole. Chuang added Hong Kong is a place that opens to the world, and chances for the case number to drop to zero are slim. She believed that the city probably has to “live with Covid.”

Hospital Authority’s chief manager for medical grade Gladys Kwan Wai-man reported seven deaths, involving six men and a woman aged 72 to 93.

The death tally of the fifth wave stands at 9,893. Including the 213 deaths in the previous four waves of the pandemic, Hong Kong’s Covid death tally stands at 10,106.

Public facilities are housing 2,114 Covid patients. Among them, 41 are in critical condition, including 14 under hospital intensive care, and 34 are in critical condition. In the last 24 hours, 307 patients have recovered from Covid and 262 have been discharged.