Hong Kong’s refusal to live with covid-19 is causing chaos
HONG KONG in the past week has been under greater stress from covid-19 than ever before. First came the shocking photographs of elderly patients on beds, lined up in the cold in the car parks of overflowing hospitals. Then the reports of foreign domestic helpers—who are forced by law to live in their employers’ houses—being abandoned to the streets after testing positive. Next, a raft of announcements: schools are to be closed to become testing venues, while disused tower blocks are to be converted into isolation centres. Having managed to keep the virus at bay for two years, the territory—struggling to replicate the mainland’s “zero-covid” approach—has been badly exposed.
The government reported more than 8,000 new cases on February 23rd—compared with 100 a month ago. The chaos on the wards has, in part, been caused by the insistence that anyone contracting the disease, even with no symptoms, must be placed in hospital or a government isolation centre.
This is unwise, says David Owens, a professor of family medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). “In a covid pandemic the last place we want infectious people is in hospitals, unless they really need treatment.” Modelling by HKU suggests there could be 180,000 daily cases within the next couple of weeks.
Hong Kong has been complacent “at all levels”, says...