In just more than a month since the fifth wave of the outbreak caused by the highly contagious omicron strain began, the cumulative number of fifth-wave infections has already exceeded the sum of the previous four waves. What’s more alarming, more patients tested positive for COVID-19 in Hong Kong than in Wuhan over the past two years. In particular, several young children under the age of 5 succumbed to omicron in the past 10 days, all showing symptoms of acute encephalitis. Professor Lau Yu-lung, the chairman of the Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases, said on an RTHK radio program that the omicron BA.2 subvariant might have re-mutated in Hong Kong.
Other than the much stronger contagiousness of omicron, three major deficiencies in our anti-pandemic system have contributed to the unprecedented prevalence of COVID-19 in Hong Kong.
The ineffective contact tracing system is the first deficiency. Hong Kong’s health authority has been relying on phone calling by a few hundred operators to trace the transmission chains and locate the sources of infection cases. This approach was able to track the contacts of single-digit daily COVID-19 cases, and a double-digit daily increase was already a burden to the contact tracing work.
We should bear in mind that assistance from the central government and mainland authorities does not absolve the local administration of its primary role of curbing the coronavirus
At the beginning of the omicron outbreak, the health authority was still able to tell the sources and transmission chains of new infections in its daily news conference. However, in the face of hundreds or even thousands of new cases surfacing every day, the health authority is at its wit’s end. At present, the health authority can no longer tell the sources of new cases, nor does it have any idea of the accurate number of infections and preliminary positive cases across the community. The recently reported daily cases could be only a fraction of the actual infections across Hong Kong.
Second, Hong Kong is severely lacking in isolation and quarantine facilities. Since the enforcement of the StayHomeSafe program on Feb 8, which allows close contacts and their family members to undergo home quarantine, the number of residential buildings on the home confinement list has been on the rise, topping 2,000 buildings on Feb 20. Contrary to the belief that home quarantine is safe, most of the small-sized apartments within these buildings are breeding grounds of new transmission chains.
Third, the public healthcare system is markedly short of capacity to cope with large-scale outbreaks, not least because public hospitals are running out of isolation beds to accommodate tens of thousands of COVID-19 patients. They are taking up the capacity of doctors and nurses who would otherwise focus on other patients, resulting in the suspension of some medical services. The competition for medical resources between the ever-increasing COVID-19 sufferers and patients with non-infectious diseases has led to postponement of treatment on both sides. At some point, the government has to set out an alternative strategy to allow close contacts to end their home isolation earlier than previously required as long as they subsequently test negative for COVID-19. Leaving patients to recover on their own is a clear sign of an overwhelmed public healthcare system.
President Xi Jinping earlier instructed the special administrative region government to shoulder the main responsibility for reining in the outbreak, which should be the top priority for Hong Kong at this moment. The SAR government should also, as Xi noted, mobilize all manpower and resources, and introduce necessary measures to ensure the health and safety of Hong Kong residents, as well as the social stability of the region. No sooner had Xi issued the directives, the central authorities and local governments on the Chinese mainland began to marshal resources to assist Hong Kong in the pandemic battle.
From Feb 16-20, Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, chaired four meetings in Shenzhen on how to coordinate manpower and resources on the mainland to better support Hong Kong’s anti-pandemic work. Between these four meetings, four medical experts and two batches of medical workers arrived in Hong Kong to support conducting viral testing.
On Feb 18, Luo Huining, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR, hosted an online meeting with Chief Secretary for Administration John Lee Ka-chiu and business leaders from various sectors to finalize 16 measures to back the SAR government in battling the pandemic.
On Feb 19, construction teams from the mainland began to build two isolation and treatment facilities for COVID-19 patients, at Penny’s Bay and Kai Tak.
Swift actions and assistance from the central government and mainland authorities fully demonstrate a principal advantage of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics in concentrating efforts from all sides to accomplish resounding success in an expeditious manner. The SAR government, though, acted in response to Xi’s directives, and seemed to be still lacking in strength in its actions.
Now that Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has announced three universal testings to be conducted in March, which should be implemented as soon as possible, hopefully the majority of the transmission chains will be identified and cut off sooner rather than later.
However, the increasing number of home-quarantine COVID-19 patients and close contacts potentially constitutes a major risk of a public health crisis. Hong Kong must leave no stone unturned in ramping up its isolation capacity, leveraging mainland support. Zhong Nanshan, a leading respiratory disease expert on the mainland, has warned that the SAR government must find ways to isolate and treat all infected patients at dedicated sites, which is the key to controlling the spread.
We should bear in mind that assistance from the central government and mainland authorities does not absolve the local administration of its primary role of curbing the coronavirus. Hong Kong is going through extraordinary times, and it takes extraordinary measures to outmaneuvering a daunting invisible enemy.
The author is a senior research fellow of China Everbright Holdings.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.