New COVID-19 outbreak begins in Macau

Macau's new round of COVID-19 broke out suddenly on the night of June 18, 2022, and the city recorded 941 positive infections in the outbreak between June 18 and July 4, the Macau newspaper Shimin Daily reported on July 6, 2022¹.

The report said the outbreak produced conditions the city had hoped to avoid: infections approaching one thousand, a degree of in-hospital transmission at the public Conde de Sao Januario Hospital, a cluster at the Four Seasons shopping mall, an outbreak at an elderly care home, and the first deaths of the outbreak¹. It said the BA.5 variant of the coronavirus spreads faster and has a shorter incubation period, and had not previously appeared in mainland China, leaving no experience to draw on¹.

The report criticized the handling of the Four Seasons cluster, saying the venue should have been disinfected, sealed off and subjected to detailed contact tracing as soon as an infected person was found, but that action stopped after only a preliminary link to an infection was established. It said that when reporters asked why the shop was not closed and sealed, relevant professionals considered it unnecessary, and more people were infected there before the shop was ordered shut¹.

The report also said the number of infections found in the community each day was far higher than the number found among people already under management, indicating continued spread in the community¹. It cited an online opinion survey published on the evening of July 4 in which 72 percent of respondents chose a full-city static "lockdown" measure as the anti-epidemic approach they most supported, a share far higher than other options¹.

The report said the government's response had been timely, with detailed contingency plans and deployment in place, and that there had been no large-scale concentrated outbreak and no panic over shortages of daily goods, with society operating generally stably¹. It said Macau had prepared plans, run drills and gathered resources in advance, and asked where the problems had come from, pointing to legal restrictions, a shortage of manpower, resource constraints, habitual thinking and path dependency as understandable constraints¹.

What it means for players

Macau's casinos and gaming areas sit inside the same city-wide public health measures described in the report. The report names a cluster at the Four Seasons shopping mall, a retail location inside a casino resort complex, and says the shop was ordered closed only after further infections there¹. It does not state which casino floors, if any, were closed, and no figures on casino closures, visitor numbers or gaming revenue appear in the report. Whether the outbreak led to specific restrictions on gambling venues has not been reported in this source.

For locals, expats and visitors who gamble in Macau, the practical picture in the report is one of an outbreak that was still spreading in the community as of early July 2022, with the BA.5 variant involved and a majority of surveyed residents favoring a full-city lockdown¹. The report gives no detail on testing or entry requirements for casinos, and none on how the outbreak affected Can I Gamble in Macau? at the time.

What happens next

It does not set out dated next steps, and no subsequent decisions on restrictions, venue closures or reopening are described in it.