City must get its act together in Covid fight

The coronavirus ordeal in Hong Kong is the best example of how complacency can ruin two years of efforts to protect a city from the onslaught of Covid-19.

From a handful of imported cases a day, Hong Kong is now dealing with tens of thousands in a runaway outbreak. But now pragmatism, not ideology, should guide the city in its efforts to make up for lost time and keep deaths and severe cases to a minimum.

And that means, in part, keeping the lines of communication open with Beijing. The central government’s decision to send senior health official Liang

Wannian to help fight the outbreak may be a slap in the face to the Hong Kong government.

But having Liang, a person trusted in the capital, on the ground can help reduce misunderstanding and hopefully lower the chance that Beijing will force the city’s government to adopt policies that don’t suit Hong Kong’s special conditions.

The city has a specific social context, making it difficult to copy the mainland’s Covid-19 playbook, something that should not be a source of criticism. But living with the virus, an approach adopted by many Western countries, is also not the answer.

Beijing has labelled the idea of abandoning its zero-covid approach as tang ping, or “lying down”, a term that suggests surrender. That leaves Hong Kong in an awkward position – with some ridiculing the city as being forced to do “sit ups” for months because it can neither “lie down” nor “stand”.

However, Hong Kong should not be straitjacketed by labels, and it cannot afford to lose more time.

The city and the mainland need to tailor an approach for Hong Kong – and quickly.

Liang has shown flexibility. At least he has not insisted on universal screening before solving logistic problems such as how to handle hundreds of thousands of positive cases. He rightly prioritised reducing deaths and severe cases, especially among the elderly. But his proposal of keeping nursing home staff in “closed loops” may not be practical because of a lack of accommodation for the carers.

Liang has insisted that the ultimate goal should be cutting transmission.

Whether Hong Kong can ever cut off all transmission is doubtful, but for now, let’s focus on the vulnerable and distribute enough resources such as rapid tests to enable the community to help itself.

And only send to quarantine facilities those who would struggle to recover at home or who present a danger to others.