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Opinion | Time to end Hong Kong’s vaccine dithering and get on with the jab
- It is clear that under Hong Kong’s present policies, we will never reach herd immunity and resume normal life
- Our urgent priorities should be new, cogent measures to drive up first vaccinations and booster shots for those already vaccinated
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Why you can trust SCMP
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The Hong Kong government’s Covid-19 management strategy, based on zero infections and voluntary vaccination, is dead. I want to be clear here – not “struggling” or “under pressure” but dead as the dodo.
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The numbers are conclusive. Once effective vaccines were available, the aim should have been for 50,000 first jabs per day. After three weeks, a million part-vaccinated people would be in the pipeline.
The pace could then have been stepped up to 100,000 per day, split evenly between first and second shots. By now we would have reached herd immunity.
Hong Kong has not achieved anything remotely close to these numbers. Our best was a brief flurry in the range of 60,000 to 65,000 a day. We are now down to a little over 20,000 first doses a day, which means the pipeline is dwindling.
The result is plain for all to see. As of the end of August, Hong Kong had 46 per cent of residents fully vaccinated and a further 9 per cent with one jab. The equivalent figures for Singapore were 75 per cent and 3 per cent.
In its most recent announcement, the government reported 60 per cent of “eligible” people had been vaccinated. The qualification is understandable, but as far as the virus is concerned, everyone is eligible. Bearing in mind efficacy varies between the different vaccines, we need a weighted average somewhere in the high 80s to achieve adequate community protection.
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