Opinion | The danger of Hong Kong’s divisive ‘vaccination bubble’ – more inequality

Name: Hong Kong to relax Covid-19 rules under ‘vaccination bubble’ in bid to boost inoculation rate
Uploaded: 2021-04-16T01:15:04.000Z
Duration: 1 min 23 s
Description: Hong Kong to relax Covid-19 rules under ‘vaccination bubble’ in bid to boost inoculation rate

A domestic vaccine passport might encourage vaccination but it would also unfairly exclude many groups, including those who are simply not eligible

A better approach would be to create benefits for those who have been vaccinated, without penalising people who are not

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A Tsim Sha Tsui restaurant in Hong Kong, last September 11. A “vaccine bubble” would limit Hongkongers’ basic freedom to move about and participate in daily life. Photo: Bloomberg

Stuart Hargreaves

Published: 9:15am, 16 Apr 2021Updated: 9:15am, 16 Apr 2021

Let me put my cards on the table: I have been vaccinated and you should be too. It’s free, it’s easy, the side effects are minimal, and either of the vaccines available will protect you from the most severe consequences of Covid-19.

Yet, the take-up rate has been woeful in Hong Kong, with less than 5 per cent of us fully vaccinated so far. No wonder the government is seeking to encourage more people to do the right thing – our lives will not really return to anything approaching normality until more than two-thirds of us are effectively immune. But while many more of us need to be vaccinated, some of the incentives announced this week should give us pause.

Under guidelines to take effect at the end of this month, bars and pubs may reopen, though at a limited capacity, when all staff and customers have received at least one vaccine dose. Three phases have been announced for restaurants. Escalating numbers will be allowed to dine together if staff (and later, diners) are vaccinated, so long as diners also use the “Leave Home Safe” app rather than the paper record system.

This approach does two things. First, it effectively creates a single class of residents who must be vaccinated to keep their jobs – those who work in the food and drink industry.

I am a professor – I talk (some might say, drone on) for hours at a time in closed spaces to large groups of people. Why is it not a requirement for me to be vaccinated? Why should the burden fall only on those who already work in typically lowly paid and precarious employment? In short, if vaccination is to be mandatory for the public good, it should be so for all of us, not some.

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Hong Kong to relax Covid-19 rules under ‘vaccination bubble’ in bid to boost inoculation rate

Second, the incentives suggest that Hong Kong is heading down the vaccine passport route, similar to that used in Israel. There, the “green pass” system lets people enter restaurants, gyms, hotels, cinemas, etc by presenting a QR code on their phone or a printed certificate. Such a system inevitably has implications on our basic civil liberties. Our freedom to participate in life is explicitly constrained – only those with “the passport” can access the full range of public and private services.

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