Either out of concern for personal commercial interests, or because they harbor an obsession with ideological bigotry, the capitulationists in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region have played up every issue or challenge that has arisen from the “dynamic zero infection” anti-COVID-19 strategy in an apparent attempt to pressure the SAR government into shifting to the “living with the virus” approach, which is a euphemism for “lying flat”.
Hong Kong’s university entrance exam, the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) examination, scheduled to begin on April 22, has not been spared by the capitulationists, who quickly made it a new argument in their crusade against “dynamic zero infection” after Hong Kong’s Education Bureau announced on Feb 28 that every DSE exam candidate would need to conduct a COVID-19 rapid antigen test before going to the exam venue. They claimed without delay that some students’ hard work for the university entrance exam would “go down the drain under Hong Kong’s DSE COVID-19 policy” if they were unfortunate enough to become infected during the exam period.
It was a slap in the face to those capitulationists when the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority announced on Tuesday that a special examination venue would be established at a quarantine center for DSE exam candidates who test positive for COVID-19 or those who need to quarantine.
It is conceivable that the capacity of the designated special exam venue, with an initial capacity for accommodating more than 1,000 exam-taking candidates, could be easily expanded when needed, now that the overall quarantine capacity in the special administrative region has been significantly boosted with the help from the Chinese mainland under the central government’s instructions.
It goes without saying that the “dynamic zero infection” approach has hurt businesses by virtue of the strict social-distancing and quarantine measures it entails, which have also caused hardship to residents. But those who have been most vocal against “dynamic zero infection” are the ones who still refuse to come out of their ideological cocoon. They have difficulty accepting the “dynamic zero infection” strategy because it isn’t a Western approach, despite the fact that it has proved to be more effective in saving lives by cutting off the transmission chains and containing the outbreaks quickly.
While new COVID-19 infections have declined in the special administrative region over the past few weeks after peaking earlier last month, the number of new deaths has remained at a double-digit level, which is heart-wrenching and unacceptable, and which also suggests that the vulnerable in the city have yet to receive sufficient protection from the lethal coronavirus as the vaccination rates among the elderly and young children are still low. If Hong Kong residents treasure lives more than anything else, as Chinese culture demands, “dynamic zero infection” should continue to prevail, with the objective of reducing infections, severe cases and fatalities.
The author is current affairs commentator.