A line of people outside a test station in Hong Kong
Photo: dpa/Kin Cheung
For one of the wealthiest cities in the world, the photos currently circulating on social media are shameful: Up to 100 senior patients are hanging out outdoors on loungers because the overcrowded Caritas Medical Center no longer has capacity. Only thermal blankets protect people from the damp and cool February temperatures. There is no question: in the 25th month of the pandemic, Hong Kong’s corona situation is more tense than ever.
Because during the fifth wave, the daily number of infections reached exponential growth for the first time. A month ago, the seven-day average in Hong Kong was around ten Covid 19 cases, currently there are up to 2,000 infections – and the trend is rising sharply. The virus came in January via people entering the quarantine hotels in the special administrative zone, from where it has now spread to the population.
Economic pressure is mounting for Hong Kong to gradually ease its zero-tolerance policy on the virus. There are plenty of incentives: After all, the city of 7.4 million people is not only an international banking metropolis, but also one of the most important trading centers in the world. The honorary chairman for micro and medium-sized companies, Danny Lau, recently told Bloomberg: The government knows that zero Covid no longer works, but you have to follow the signals from Beijing.
Because the central government there has long been setting the epidemiological tone. It was only on Wednesday that China’s head of state Xi Jinping announced through the state-controlled media that containing the virus in Hong Kong has top priority: “All necessary measures” will be taken.” As a first step, the neighboring Chinese province of Guangdong has test kits and laboratory capacities for Hong Kong provided and dispatched staff to set up temporary isolation centers. As before, every infected person – regardless of whether they have symptoms or not – has to go to a central quarantine.
But the people in the special administrative region are increasingly openly doubting whether the zero-Covid strategy can still be maintained in view of the highly infectious omicron variant. At least, however, a look at mainland China seems to confirm that it is at least possible: there, within the 1.4 billion population, just over 40 cases per day were registered. The growth curve in the People’s Republic was not only flattened, but de facto pushed to zero.
“Why wasn’t Hong Kong SAR’s zero-Covid strategy so effective?” China’s state broadcaster CGTN asked in a news program on Wednesday. The obvious answer: Hong Kong has not imposed a lockdown – a strategy that has repeatedly proven to be a panacea in China. Gabriel Leung, a medical doctor at the University of Hong Kong, agrees: “We need social distancing rules that are at least three times as strong as they are now to be able to bring the virus back to zero.”
The current rules have already turned the metropolis into a real ghost town: Public meetings with more than two people are prohibited, even in private apartments the participants can only come from two households. And if you don’t follow a test request, you now have to pay the equivalent of more than 1100 euros.
