The West Kowloon Magistrates Courts today had the defendant Paul Lui Po-lam face his sentence under 12 accusations of "exposing other persons to the risk of infection" before Magistrate Li Chi-ho.

According to the court, the 42-year-old fruit store staffer tested positive for Covid-19 after undergoing two nucleic acid tests at a testing stand and a hospital in Sham Shui Po on February 24 last year and received the test results in the following days.

However, the court learned Lui didn’t follow the public hygiene guidelines to isolate himself for home quarantine but deliberately went to dine in multiple restaurants, including Yoshinoya, Maxim's MX, and a cha chaan teng, as well as shopping in some supermarkets. He took public transportation from Sham Shui Po to Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok six times.

The court was also told that Lui had published a post on his social media platform, during which he was supposed to stay in quarantine, saying, "feeling a sore throat and wanting to have soup, you know what I mean" before he went to a restaurant. In another post on the same platform, Lui published a photo of a rapid antigen test stick indicating his test result for coronavirus was positive.

Today in court, Lui refused to plead guilty but claimed he should not be sentenced to imprisonment, citing he engaged in volunteer work and helped to distribute anti-pandemic supplies.

However, Magistrate Li slammed Lui as "being extremely selfish" and "neglecting social responsibilities" for deliberately infecting others when the pandemic was severe, and the daily infections were soaring during the fifth wave of the outbreak.

Lui was sentenced to six months in jail, and the sentence will be run consecutively with his other charges, which will leave him imprisoned for seven months and 15 days.