HK ‘unlikely’ to ease curbs before end of winter peak
Hong Kong is unlikely to further relax its Covid-19 restrictions before the end of the winter peak season and the wider adoption of the new Omicron-specific vaccine in the city, leading medical experts have said.
Striking a cautious note, Professor David Hui Shu-cheong of Chinese University yesterday said people might have to wait longer before authorities would consider easing any more restrictions.
“For the government to consider relaxing the restrictions, I believe we need to wait after the end of the winter peak season, during which respiratory viruses are very active,” Hui, a government pandemic adviser, told a radio programme.
“We also need to wait for a period of time for wider adoption of the second-generation vaccine and for the pandemic to start to stabilise.”
Hui’s remarks were on the back of a recent rise in daily infections, with cases in the city passing the 10,000 mark on Thursday for the first time since September 10, and the death toll for the past week increased by more than 40 per cent.
After a slight dip on Friday, the daily caseload again reached five figures yesterday, with health authorities recording 10,111 infections, 497 of which were imported, and 17 more deaths.
The city’s overall tally stands at 2,148,489 coronavirus cases and 10,790 related fatalities.
Ben Cowling, chair professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, also said a further relaxation could not be expected soon. “When the case numbers are going up, the government argues that it would be unwise to remove restrictions. When the case numbers are going down, the government argues that it would be unwise to remove restrictions in case there was then a rebound in cases,” Cowling said.
But he stressed that, despite the rising infection rate, the number of severe cases remained very low, which he argued did not justify a tightening of restrictions.
Cowling recommended lifting compulsory testing notices and ceasing to enforce the Cap 599 Prevention and Control of Disease Ordinance, saying they had a minimal effect on transmission but cost a lot of taxpayers’ money.
“Even if you do with 5 or 10 per cent of the daily cases and strictly isolate them, it won’t make much difference to the overall situation,” he said. “There’s no public health rationale for Cap 599. For Cap 599 to apply, there has to be a probability of a large number of deaths or disabilities.”
Authorities also recently made BioNTech’s Omicron-specific vaccine available to uninfected adults as a fourth dose or for recovered patients with two jabs as a third dose.
The second-generation vaccine contains a bivalent formulation that targets Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, the two strains which are dominant in Hong Kong.
The government also advised people aged 50 and above, immunocompromised people over the age of 12, and adults with a higher risk of Covid-19 exposure to get their shots.
Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan yesterday said authorities had procured 1.9 million doses of the bivalent vaccines, and that the second batch would soon be shipped to Hong Kong after the first batch of 770,000 doses was put into use.