Huizhi Gao's research while affiliated with The University of Hong Kong and other places

... While efficacy (performance in controlled or ideal conditions) and effectiveness (performance in usual or realworld conditions) are not synonymous [450,509], a large consensus and a growing body of literature have moved forward the uptake of community masking as part of comprehensive NPI bundles or "policy packages" aimed at preventing infections caused by respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 [55,58,261,262,295,464,508,[510][511][512][513][514][515][516]. Importantly, a fact undergirding community mask wearing during the pandemic is the risk of transmission, not only from symptomatic individuals, but also from presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals (discussed in section 3). ...

... In this context, Benjamin Cowling and colleagues [9] provide a timely methodological contribution. Their study seeks to determine whether it is possible to assess the transmission risk of international arrivals, based on source country, as the basis of screening travellers for admission. ...

... Social distancing in the context of pandemics relate to steps taken to initiate a "social contact network-focused mitigation " to offer protection against the spread of a disease in the absence or shortage of medical means to control it ( [33] , p.1671) .The purpose of such social distancing currently is to "to reduce transmission, thereby delaying the epidemic peak, reducing the size of the epidemic peak, and spreading cases over a longer time to relieve pressure on the healthcare system " ( [28] , p. 976). ...

... accessed on 10 May 2021). All recorded cases of infection were laboratory-and clinical-confirmed via nasopharyngeal swab and PCR with reverse transcription (RT-PCR) [17]. The data depict the details of the confirmed cases that are related to individual patients, comprising case number, reported and onset dates, case classification, and other demographic information. ...

... The COVID-19 pandemic has called for an unprecedented interest of modelers for epidemic dynamics both per-se, to investigate the direct epidemiological consequences of the pandemic and related mitigation measures, and also to investigate its broader implications on society. This has led to an endless number 55 of papers and preprints of which we quote here only a few focusing on COVID-19 epidemiological modeling [2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. Most of the cited investigations have resorted to simulation. ...

... Although government stimulus packages provide some relief for firms that are severely affected (Foo et al., 2020), the capacity for recovery of the tourism system is fundamentally affected by the imposition of nonpharmaceutical interventions (e.g. quarantine, border control) because of the extent to which they restrict mobility (Ryu et al., 2020). This argument indicates that public health interventions might delay the recovery of the tourism industry, a view also shared by Hall et al. (2020) and Gossling et al. (2020). ...

... Since 25 March 2020, non-Hong Kong residents from overseas were prohibited from entering Hong Kong. Those permitted to travel were required to undertake 14 days home/hotel quarantine and were tested on arrival (day 0) and day 12 of their quarantine period [10] . Individuals who reported symptoms during quarantine were arranged to have additional testing during the quarantine period. ...

... Adding to existing literature (2)(3)(4)(5), our study indicates that community vulnerability is dynamic, changing with the evolution of the pandemic. In waves 1 and 2, COVID-19 cases were mainly imported cases, including those infecting students and domestic helpers returning from overseas, as well as business travelers (12). These cases were found mainly within more socially privileged families and thereby an inverse association between socioeconomic status and case counts was seen. ...