Compiled by JAROD LIM and RAGANANTHINI VETHASALAM
THE Miss Hong Kong Pageant 2022 final, which was supposed to be held on Sept 4, has been postponed after five contestants tested positive for Covid-19, reported Sin Chew Daily.
According to the daily, all pageant activities had been suspended until the five women recovered.
In a statement, Hong Kong broadcaster TVB said it had tested the contestants as part of its Covid-19 prevention measures.
“All promotions and rehearsals have been put on hold to prevent other contestants from getting infected,” it said.
A total of 19 contestants will be vying for the pageant title this year.
Currently, Hong Kong is seeing around 9,000 Covid-19 cases daily.
> China Press reported that a textile company in Dongguan in Guangdong province, China, had given its employees seven months’ leave due to the worsening Covid-19 pandemic in the city.
The company said its management had decided to have the leave take effect from Aug 30 until Feb 9 next year.
“Due to insufficient orders and supplies, employees in some departments are to take leave until next year, the Year of the Rabbit, except for those in the layout, sales and product innovation departments.“If there are incoming orders, the company will inform employees to come back to work,” it said, though it did not specify if it was paid leave.
China, which has a population of over one billion and is the world’s second biggest economy, is still practising a zero-Covid-19 policy.
> The daily also reported that starting Sept 3, travellers to South Korea will no longer need to do pre- departure Covid-19 testing, though they will still need to take a PCR test within a day of their arrival.
The easing of rules comes after the country’s daily Covid-19 cases dropped from over 180,000 in mid-August to 100,000.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.