Hong Kong's 'zero-covid' policy buckles under the onslaught of omicron - but authorities just won't let it go
HONG KONG - Ann Chan spent the last week of January locked down with her husband and two sons in their tiny 300 square foot (30 square meter) apartment.
Her public housing complex, Kwai Chung, had turned into a dystopian tableau. Locked down by the government over fears of a covid outbreak, residents could only leave for daily tests administered by hazmat-suited health workers in blue pop-up tents. With all supplies cut off, meals - oily and barely edible - were distributed by authorities. Garbage piled up "like a mountain," Chan, 37, said, with some of the bags leaking brown liquid all over the floor.
It felt like "we were fighting [the virus] like cornered beasts," she said.
The seven day lockdown of Kwai Chung, along with the culling of thousands of hamsters, the suspension of flights from major cities and other social distancing measures were meant to buy Hong Kong time against the pandemic's most transmissible variants, and get the city back to zero infections.
It did not.
Video: Here's how omicron is impacting different parts of the world
Hong Kong is instead fighting its most severe battle against the coronavirus since it was first detected more than two years ago, pushing the government's pandemic strategy of zero covid to the breaking point. The approach of throttling the virus that has worked (so far) for mainland China is falling apart in Hong Kong, which lacks the ability to enforce the extremely strict lockdowns in cities like Wuhan and Xian - and is destroying the territory's role as an open international city in the process.
By contrast, once-strict countries like Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are moving to live with covid, within limits, reopening borders and easing social distancing restrictions.
"There is no doubt that we are at an absolute critical juncture," said Siddharth Sridhar, a clinical virologist at the University of Hong Kong's School of Clinical Medicine. "We are forced by a large covid-19 outbreak to be very practical, in terms of trying to achieve what we can achieve, rather than really being bent on achieving zero cases."
Isolation centers are filling up and lockdowns are proving ineffective as new coronavirus cases climb. More than 1,200 new infections were recorded over the past two days. Almost 4,000 people are currently quarantined in government-run centers across the city.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong authorities further tightened social distancing rules, limiting outdoor gatherings to just two people and closing more venues including religious sites and hair salons. For the first time, restrictions will now also cover private property, with a maximum of just two families allowed to gather in a residence at one time.
"At this moment, we still feel that this is the best strategy for Hong Kong, using all our capacity and our means to ensure that we could achieve the 'dynamic zero' target," said Carrie Lam, the territory's chief executive, using China's term for eliminating nearly all cases.
The push for zero comes from Beijing, which has tightened control over once-autonomous Hong Kong. Chinese state media and officials from Beijing have warned that a deviation from the policy would be a disaster for the city. Hong Kong remains closed to the mainland, and reopening that border is the stated priority of the government.
Hong Kong first detected omicron cases in two flight attendants just before the new year after months without community infections. Last month, a cross-infection at a quarantine hotel sparked a new string of local cases. Cases have since mushroomed across the city, including some spread by a government official who held a birthday party attended by 170 guests.
Since Jan. 5, flights have been suspended from eight countries including Britain and United States. Strict social distancing measures, including a ban on restaurant dining after 6 p.m. and gym closures, have been in place for the past month.
Officials urged residents to stay home during the three-day Lunar New Year holiday last week to no avail. Families visited their relatives and gathered to celebrate the most important festival of the year. Social media swarmed with photos of families feasting over hot pot and poon choi, a festive Chinese casserole, without masks at their homes. Hiking trails and shopping malls were also crowded, as were markets and grocery stores, ahead of the new year.
Now, mandatory testing sites across the city are the only packed venues amid the worry over soaring cases.
Unlike much of the rest of the world, Hong Kong never saw covid overwhelm its hospitals because it was so successful in containing the virus over the past years. Currently, only two of Hong Kong's 1,668 active cases - both elderly and unvaccinated - are in critical condition. But that number is expected to rise because Hong Kong has not succeeded in the factor allowing many other countries to open up - vaccinations.
Only 22% of people over 80s in Hong Kong have two doses of the coronavirus vaccine and just half of those between the ages of 70 and 79 are vaccinated.
Authorities have struggled to incentivize jabs, in part because life remains largely unchanged regardless of vaccination status. There are no restrictions on the unvaccinated and all covid cases are hospitalized in Hong Kong, whether vaccinated or not, severely ill or asymptomatic, a policy that holds even as isolation facilities are filling up.
Some experts argue this is counterproductive and confusing messaging.
"If we are saying look the vaccine is going to protect you" but do not change procedures for the vaccinated, then "the interpretation is that the vaccine didn't protect me at all, it failed, because I'm still being isolated, and quarantined, and treated like a patient," said Ooi Eng Eong, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
From Feb. 24, however, the government will begin mandating vaccinations for almost all venues in Hong Kong, including malls and supermarkets, hoping this will finally encourage uptake by making life inconvenient for the unvaccinated.
Fatigue over the government's approach has begun to set into the community. At first, scarred by the 2003 SARS epidemic which killed almost 300 here, Hong Kong residents were quick to mask up and stay indoors at the start of the pandemic. But most of the vaccinated population now fear the harsh isolation that would come with a positive test more than the virus.
According to a study conducted by the Hong Kong Democratic Party in late January, 65% of 603 interviewees said the city should prepare their strategy to live with the virus, compared to 42% in November.
"We saw through the virus - it is not a dystopian virus that will destroy mankind," said Albert Au-yeung, a 30-year-old Hong Kong resident who said he is not avoiding gatherings or crowds. "Each year we are adapting more to the virus. Why should we walk such an extreme path?"
A cartoon in a local newspaper summed up the frustration. A man standing outside a temple, surrounded by trees, littered with leaves asks his master how long he needs to go on sweeping them.
He responds: "You are not sweeping leaves. This is 'dynamic covid-zero,' understand?"
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