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OpinionLetters

Letters | Hong Kong coronavirus quarantine: rethink strategy to boost vaccination rate

  • The authorities should distinguish between those living in the same house as a confirmed case and second-level contacts, allowing the vaccinated among the latter to quarantine at home

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Residents are evacuated from Block 11 of Carmel Cove, Caribbean Coast, in Tung Chung on April 30 after a woman was found to be carrying a mutated strain of the coronavirus. Photo: Winson Wong
Letters
It is past time that Hong Kong rethought its approach to the quarantining of close contacts of confirmed Covid-19 patients. We are now more than a year into this, and the suffering and impact of compulsory quarantine orders is becoming excessive. Particularly so as we have now moved to 21 -day quarantine for variants of concern.

The medical evidence shows that vaccination confers some level of protection from infection, and a reduction in infectiousness at an individual level. Obviously this is not 100 per cent protection, but it does significantly reduce the risks involved.

In the case of first-level close contacts (living together, or spending considerable time unmasked, with confirmed infected patients) the risk is high, and quarantine is obviously still necessary.

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However, for second-level close contacts (such as those living in the same building, or colleagues at a workplace) in cases where masks are worn and the close contact has been fully vaccinated, the risk is now significantly lower.
I suggest that for such vaccinated second-level close contacts, compulsory quarantine be replaced by home isolation combined with regular testing. This should only be done with medical evidence to support it, but we should at least be looking at this as an option (“Quarantined Hong Kong residents question why vaccination made no difference”, May 4).

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Inside Hong Kong's mandatory coronavirus quarantine camp at Penny's Bay

Inside Hong Kong's mandatory coronavirus quarantine camp at Penny's Bay

We are fortunate to live in a city where vaccination is freely available, with a choice of vaccines. If protecting yourself, your family, friends and community, is not sufficient, then perhaps reducing the likelihood of being quarantined as a close contact may help incentivise this in a safe and risk averse way.

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