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Coronavirus Hong Kong
OpinionLetters

Letters | Hong Kong’s Covid-19 vaccine pass has outlived its usefulness

  • Readers discuss why the vaccine pass must go, and how the bus journey experience can be improved

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People scan a QR code with the “Leave Home Safe” app before entering Ocean Park on October 4. Photo: Sam Tsang
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One can hardly go a day without seeing some kind of a call from one or other industry here in Hong Kong for the current “0+3” policy for inbound travellers to be reduced to “0+0”, as this will open the doors for inbound tourism to resume.

And certainly “0+0” would be a great step forward. However, the continued application of the vaccine pass is an equally serious deterrent. If we aspire to return to significant levels of inbound tourism, how do we expect the Hong Kong authorities to administer the authentication and uploading of vaccination records on the “Leave Home Safe” app for tens and even hundreds of thousands of tourists? It’s a non-starter.

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Anyway, what is the purpose of the vaccine pass these days? Back in early 2021, when the vaccines arrived, there was a feeling that as long as people were vaccinated, Covid-19 could be beaten, but this is far from being the case. For example, despite high levels of vaccination in both Hong Kong and Singapore, both places continue to have thousands of daily cases and it is clear that while vaccination undoubtedly reduces the severity of the disease it does not prevent transmission.

Meanwhile, wedded to its ambition of achieving a world-beating level of vaccination, the Hong Kong government has increasingly repurposed the vaccine pass to apply pressure on the unvaccinated by denying them access to an increasingly wide range of facilities. Maybe this was somewhat effective in its early stages but the law of diminishing returns applies. We now have maybe a few hundred people deciding to take a first or second jab every day, while the rest of the population is subjected to having to prove their vaccination status on an ongoing basis.
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At the outset of Covid-19, there was a huge focus on the application of information technology to support contact tracing. This was fair enough as it was the best tool at the time, but circumstances have changed, and the health authorities’ obsession with the idea that technology solutions can beat Covid-19 is taking us nowhere. As long as the vaccine pass policy remains in force, Hong Kong’s tourism will remain moribund.

Bob Rogers, Sai Kung

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