Opinion | ‘Dynamic zero infection’ strategy works on the mainland, but not in hands of Hong Kong officials

The strategy’s success depends on a capacity to effectively and quickly identify localised cases and cut off the transmission chain. But as the Kwai Chung cluster shows, lockdowns, large-scale testing and efficient track-and-trace are not our forte

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Residents wait in line at a makeshift Covid-19 testing station at the Kwai Chung Estate on January 23. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 2:30pm, 6 Feb 2022

Patriot and lawmaker Junius Ho Kwan-yiu recently suggested that health experts who were in favour of Hong Kong “living with Covid” could be contravening the national security law. According to him, such a strategy that breaks with the national pandemic policy might “breach national defence and disrupt the order of the society”.

Unfortunately for Ho, no one fell into his fallacy trap. Neither the irony nor the hypocrisy of his comments is lost on us. It has barely been a month since he himself attended the most infamous birthday party in the city that led to the resignation of the home affairs secretary.

Let’s not forget his outrageous outbursts while waiting to be hauled off to quarantine and during his “staycation” at Penny’s Bay. The patriot called for the resignation of the chief executive, described the city’s anti-epidemic efforts as a “sand castle” and claimed he was being “illegally detained” in the quarantine centre.

We had front row seats to Ho living with the possibility of Covid-19 and it wasn’t pretty.

Lawmaker Junius Ho receives his second vaccination dose on March 22 last year. A day after Ho suggested advocates of the “live with Covid” approach might contravene the national security law, the government issued a press statement saying a discussion of Hong Kong’s coronavirus policy is not illegal. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

We are going to keep talking about Hong Kong’s increasingly ineffective pandemic strategy in the face of a rapidly changing virus. It is precisely because we are patriots that we should keep questioning why the city’s strategy, adopted with the aim of reopening borders with the mainland, has so far failed to deliver.

Pressure has been mounting against the city government’s zero-Covid strategy not only because the policy has strained businesses and affected people’s daily life. The sight of the government scrambling without a plan B has further fuelled frustration.

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