Analysis-Clear roadmap needed for Hong Kong’s revival as COVID sweeps through city -experts By Reuters

By Farah Learn

HONG KONG (Reuters) – In just under two months, Hong Kong went from remaining a person of the best sites in the world at controlling COVID-19 to just one of the worst.

Fatalities have skyrocketed, the health and fitness process is swamped, morgues are overflowing and community self esteem in the town govt is at an all-time reduced.

Although the govt sticks to a “zero-COVID” coverage identical to that of mainland China, town chief Carrie Lam hinted on Thursday she could ease constraints amid problems above the city’s standing as a world-wide fiscal hub.

But with infections spilling over on to the mainland and regional cases hovering all over 30,000 per day amongst a population of just 7.4 million, there requires to be a very clear exit technique, in line with discovering to reside with the virus, like other key towns, instead than striving to eradicate it, wellness gurus say.

Densely populated Hong Kong has registered the most fatalities for each million people today globally in new months – extra than 24 occasions that of rival Singapore – owing to a significant proportion of elderly who have been unvaccinated as the very transmissible Omicron variant ripped as a result of care residences considering the fact that February.

The tragedy could have been avoided had, specialists say, authorities available incentives for vaccinations and applied health-related means far more effectively to prepare for COVID-19, which was initially identified in late 2019 in the central Chinese town of Wuhan.

“The catastrophe unfolding in just our hospital method is predictable, preventable and political,” mentioned Dr David Owens, a founder of OT&P clinics and an honorary scientific assistant professor in family members medicine at the University of Hong Kong.

Lam’s administration has been lambasted repeatedly by politicians, professional-Beijing media and on Chinese social media, just weeks right before the town is thanks to keep an election on May 8 to choose who will direct the territory for the future five several years.

Firms and people are discouraged at what they see as regular mixed messaging from the government and actions which have heavily disrupted organization and ruined the economy for significantly of the previous two yrs.

Tens of hundreds have still left, with web outflows showing an exodus of much more than 45,000 people so considerably in March, when compared with approximately 17,000 in December prior to the fifth wave of the pandemic hit, prompting fears for Hong Kong’s for a longer period-time period competitiveness.

Residing WITH COVID

Lam has but to give steerage for how Hong Kong can resume some semblance of normality, regardless of daily push briefings in which she discusses facts from sewage testing to thanking mainland authorities for their support. The previous British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

“Hong Kong was definitely not ready when we entered into the fifth wave as evidently demonstrated, but let us see whether we can get better prepared for that eventuality of that transition in direction of normality,” mentioned Gabriel Leung, University of Hong Kong’s dean of drugs and a govt adviser on the pandemic.

Leung stated Hong Kong needed to make your mind up regardless of whether it was heading to adhere with its “zero-COVID” coverage, or consider to reside with it as an endemic.

“We want to be carrying out all that significant wondering process now. Because you have to make strategies accordingly.”

Even if the governing administration ended up to adhere with zero-COVID by mass screening and intensive make contact with tracing, Hong Kong would continue to have to have to changeover to residing with the virus sooner or later, the experts reported.

About 50 percent of the city’s citizens have very likely currently been infected, according to a review from the College of Hong Kong this 7 days.

Increasing vaccinations to above 90% from about 80% at the moment is essential, when preserving the most vulnerable, like individuals in nursing properties, the specialists mentioned. Now only 56% of individuals in excess of 80 have been vaccinated.

With residents building immunity from vaccinations and infections, it’s possible that future outbreaks will be fewer intense, stated Dr. Siddharth Sridhar, clinical assistant professor of Microbiology at the College of Hong Kong.

“So that offers us a sure degree of freedom in terms of opening up additional and acquiring more acceptable journey limits that what we have found prior to.”

Hong Kong has implemented its most draconian actions since the pandemic commenced in 2020.

Flights from nine nations around the world, which include the United States and Britain, are banned. Inbound travellers who test detrimental on arrival must keep in a hotel for 14 times, a harsher rule than for an infected resident who requirements to isolate for seven times right until tests adverse.

Both equally rules have no scientific basis and need to be lifted right away, some gurus stated.

Social distancing steps, this sort of as a ban on community gatherings of far more than two men and women, the closure of most venues and a curfew on cafe eating past 6 p.m., could also be progressively peaceful, mentioned epidemiologist Ben Cowling.

Hong Kong could goal to do what Singapore has completed so that immediately after “a few to 6 months, where by all individuals measures have been calm, it is just up to people today to handle their possess risks and there is no have to have for community-large policies”.