Six people tested positive for the coronavirus among hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers who were the first to undergo the city’s universal screening program, health authorities said on Thursday.

Four of the six were repeat cases, having been identified earlier to be infected. They were cured of the disease in hospital and were discharged between mid and late August. The government’s Centre for Health Protection explained that the four carried “residual viral material” inside their bodies when taking the test.

“The chances of them being infected a second time are relatively low,” said Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the center’s communicable diseases branch. “The four are not likely infectious.”

The authorities announced the findings of the first batch of 128,000 residents tested under the voluntary citywide program, three days after testing started on Monday in spite of adamant opposition from local medical workers, pro-democracy lawmakers and activists. Worries prevail that Hongkongers’ DNA information may be collected and sent to mainland China.

As of 1 p.m. on Thursday, about 850,000 people had registered for the mass screening and around 370,000 had been tested.

Gabriel Leung, dean of the medicine faculty at the University of Hong Kong, said that the outcome corresponded to the projection the faculty had made. HKU earlier deduced that 8.5 people would be found infected in the first batch of the testing scheme.

Apart from the six cases, on Thursday eight new coronavirus cases were confirmed, of which four did not have known sources.

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