Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form . Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po should be applauded for his creative rental deferral scheme and the chief executive should back him to the hilt without equivocation (“Finance chief’s rental deferral plan for small Hong Kong firms in trouble”, March 10 ). Small businesses have been abruptly ordered to close for months, with only meagre and delayed government handouts as compensation. In large part, these businesses provide many of the services that give our city its life – restaurants, bars, gyms, yoga and dance studios, beauty spas and so on. They do this in a very difficult environment, even at the best of times, given Hong Kong’s high rents and short-term leases. Many of them operate with only a small financial cushion that never allowed for such draconian shutdowns. Property developers and most landlords, by contrast, have been enjoying the munificence of the US Federal Reserve since 2008 with the historically low cost of financing combining with an unending increase in capital values. It is a disgrace that in their self-interested myopia, they should be prevailing upon the government to cancel the rental deferral plan. Are they so ignorant as to not appreciate their good fortune? Why should they not share in the pain being inflicted upon their tenants and also help them to stay in business, which will benefit all in the longer term? Keep the rental deferral plan on track. The non-intervention market principle has already been broken by the government-imposed shutdowns. Antony W. Wood, Quarry Bay Clear information needed on triage of Covid-19 cases For maybe weeks now the Hong Kong public has not had clear information on the triage of those infected with Covid-19, similar to this page by the US National Institutes of Health giving guidelines according to the severity of illness. Can we have a simple flow chart or a quantifiable approach that allows people to assess the severity of their illness and decide whether to rush to stress our emergency services or stay put at home? If, however, diagnosis is more an art than a science, could there at least be rules on screening and defining mild cases, leaving the moderate and severe cases to access the strained resources? Albert Tong, Quarry Bay Locking in care home staff not the right solution Reducing the movement of staff working in elderly care facilities is not the answer to the soaring Covid-19 infections and deaths among the elderly in care homes ( “Hong Kong care homes to adopt ‘closed-loop’ system to curb coronavirus outbreaks”, March 9 ). It is already difficult to enlist staff to work in those care facilities and demanding a closed loop may cause even more shortages of qualified staff. More sensible requirements, such as fully vaccinating staff and patients with three Covid-19 shots and other vaccines such as the flu shot, should be made mandatory. Better hygiene, such as regular washing of hands, wearing surgical masks, gloves and protective clothing, and good ventilation, are much more effective and palatable than locking in staff. Hong Kong must accept living with the virus and realise that keeping case numbers at zero is not possible. Mass testing is not the key to stopping the spread of infection. It is actually ineffective, as you could test negative one week and test positive the following week. It is also expensive and creates a lot of waste. Vaccination is the key to better immunity for staff and patients in elderly homes and for all in Hong Kong. Harriet Tung, The Peak Hospital update not worth an emergency alert It would seem that the Carrie Lam’s administration cannot get things right the first time and are trying to fly the plane while building it. From the catastrophic extradition bill and the management of Omicron surge to the mass testing of Covid-19 , the government lurches from one misstep to the next. I am sure the decision to convert Queen Elizabeth Hospital into a facility for Covid-19 patients only was not taken at the spur of the moment. Surely, the government would have time to let the public know and post notices around the hospital, especially the Accident and Emergency Department, which probably is the only place where people would turn up unannounced. All the other departments see and treat patients by appointment only. There is such a thing as multimedia to communicate with the public effectively. There is a fundamental difference between this and alerting the public to events that will affect the whole population. Lam Kam Sing, Tai Po District councils should play bigger role in Covid-19 fight In Hong Kong’s war against the pandemic, the commander-in-chief should have an overall picture of the pandemic and change tactics in line with the mutation of the virus. The commander has to work across the social spectrum smoothly. We are fortunate to have many specialists advising the chief executive, but there must be coordination or we will get conflicting information from different experts. The most fatal mistake in the war against the pandemic is district council dysfunction . The district councillors of the city’s 18 districts are the “go-betweens” of the people and the government – they help funnel information to the grass roots efficiently and effectively as they tend to have close ties with the local community. Furthermore, volunteers can provide door-to-door services to residents. But the district councils are not functioning as they have been envisaged. Each district should assess its resources in terms of open space, manpower, volunteers and medical facilities for possible appropriation by the government. District councillors should organise those manning testing spots and interim centres for the elderly discharged from their care homes. We should fully mobilise these human resources to deal with the pandemic. If district work is meticulously planned and functioning well, any outbreak in one district would not spill over to other districts and can be contained. Lo Wai Kong, Lai Chi Kok