Hong Kong leader urges residents to stay home amid worst outbreak
Hong Kong’s leader pleaded with residents to stay home as the city battles its worst Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began, while vowing to stick with a zero-tolerance approach to stamp out the virus.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday her administration would announce new Covid restrictions this afternoon—without giving details—and warned that the city’s health system was “on the brink.” She pleaded with residents not to go out, even as she said the government must take into account the general tolerance of the public when formulating policy.
“We need your support, we need your cooperation,” Lam told the city’s residents at a regular news briefing. “Please stay at home.”
Asked about implementing a China-style citywide lockdown, Lam said the current mix of policies was the “best strategy” for Hong Kong “at this moment.”
Hong Kong reported a record number of coronavirus infections on Monday, with daily cases surging to more than 600. The rapid spread of the Omicron variant in the face of some of the world’s toughest social distancing and travel restrictions shows the difficulty of maintaining a strategy that aims to totally eliminate the spread of the virus.
The city’s tactics, which include mandatory 14-day hotel quarantines for returning residents, have mostly kept the virus out of the densely packed finance hub of 7.4 million people. Some 213 people have died and about 15,000 have been infected since the pandemic began. The city has seen months pass with zero local infections, and life has largely continued as normal.
But with hundreds of people now testing positive each day, officials are scrambling to contain the outbreak. They are especially worried by an extremely low vaccination rate among the city’s elderly. Lam said the vaccination rate for people over 70 years old is still less than 50 percent, leaving more than 500,000 vulnerable residents at risk of severe illness or death and posing a huge risk to hospitals.
“This will put pressure on our healthcare system, which is already on the brink of oversaturation,” Lam said. “The risk is increasing because there are more cases in the residents of residential care homes and workers, so we need to boost the vaccination rate.”
The current outbreak has put the city’s meticulous contact-tracing and isolation measures under severe strain. There have been numerous complaints about understaffed government isolation facilities, and long lines are forming for people sent for mandatory testing. Officials have constantly shifted their approach to quarantine facilities, with a spartan isolation camp on an outlying island running out of capacity as the government isolated hundreds of close contacts of Covid-positive people.
“No government has at their disposal infinite energy and resources,” Lam said.
The city has already introduced new restrictions, including banning dine-in service at restaurants after 6 p.m., closing cinemas, gyms and bars, and banning inbound flights from eight countries.
Hong Kong is expected to return to its toughest anti-virus measures by limiting the number of restaurant patrons to two per table, local newspaper Sing Tao reported Tuesday, citing unidentified people.
Officials are also expected to require a vaccine passport to enter shopping malls, the South China Morning Post reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, and restrict public gatherings to two people.