Hong Kong Sees First Covid Deaths in Months as Curbs Tested
Hong Kong reported two deaths in Covid-positive patients, the first fatalities in the financial hub since September.
(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong reported three deaths in Covid-positive patients, the first fatalities in the financial hub since September, as a record outbreak overwhelms hospitals and testing resources, providing the biggest challenge to its zero-tolerance approach to the virus since the pandemic began.
Two men in their 70s -- one inoculated with two doses of China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s shot, and the other unvaccinated -- and a 94-year-old woman died this week. All had chronic illnesses. The deaths come as Hong Kong reports its highest case tallies so far, with 986 new infections announced on Thursday following more than 1,000 just a day earlier.
The outbreak, while small compared with other parts of the world, is putting a health system set up to root out every case and wall off all infection from the community under unprecedented pressure. The city had managed to live for months with no local transmission due to onerous anti-virus measures -- including flight bans, up to 21 days of quarantine and mandatory hospital admission -- but the arrival of the more-transmissible omicron risks shattering this steadfast push for Covid Zero, the virus strategy embraced by Beijing.
The city also reported about 800 so-called preliminary positive infections Thursday.
The rapid uptick in cases, which almost doubled in one day to a record 1,161 Wednesday, is testing a hospital system that was being used until recently to contain all Covid cases, regardless of severity. Officials are now telling those who’ve tested positive not to go to emergency rooms. Most hospitalized cases are still mild in Hong Kong because the dominant variant is omicron, but there is little experience of Covid in the community, which like China and a handful of other places has lived with no cases at all for long stretches of the pandemic.
Authorities are especially concerned about the elderly population, with only about half of residents aged 70 and above receiving a first vaccine dose so far. The virus has now been found in more than 10 aged-care facilities.
‘Deeply Sorry’
The explosive rise in cases has prompted a series of U-turns from the government, including a request for anyone with mild Covid-like symptoms to go to a private doctor to get tested, rather than to emergency rooms in public hospitals to have their diagnosis confirmed. Compulsory testing orders, similar to those deployed in mainland China, have resulted in long lines of people outside community facilities in a growing number of neighborhoods.
“We are deeply sorry and uneasy that many citizens have to wait for a long time to be sampled for nucleic acid testing, and many citizens who have tested positive have to wait for a long time” to enter isolation facilities, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam wrote in a Facebook post late Wednesday. The authorities “are doing their best and are constantly seeking ways and additional support to enhance their capabilities,” she said.
Hong Kong is deploying its toughest virus restrictions yet, including a limit on multi-family gatherings in homes and other private venues, as well as the return of a two-person limit for public gatherings. It will also expand the list of venues where entry is limited to those who are vaccinated to shopping malls, food markets and hair salons in a system that starts Feb. 24.
In addition to targeting socializing -- with gatherings during last week’s Lunar New Year holiday blamed for the exponential increase in infections -- authorities have also needed to loosen some other health measures.
Previously, all infected patients, even those without symptoms, were kept in hospital isolation wards for weeks but now mild cases are being moved out to the government-run Penny’s Bay quarantine camp. Close contacts can isolate at home, despite the higher risk of spread that these laxer measures pose, and a turnaround from a previous policy that saw them taken to a quarantine facility.
Hong Kong and mainland China are the last remaining adherents of the Covid Zero strategy, which succeeded early in the pandemic in keeping the virus out, but has become harder to maintain amid more transmissible variants. Sticking to the approach also risks leaving the two places isolated -- and subject to increasingly disruptive or bizarre containment measures -- as the rest of the world reopens and seeks to live alongside Covid.
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