Editorial | Coronavirus: Hong Kong’s growing death toll is incentive enough to get those jabs done
- With the unvaccinated, especially among the elderly, more likely to become seriously ill or die, there is no time to waste in closing loopholes in the city’s defences
Hong Kong has finally achieved a Covid-19 vaccination rate of at least one jab for more than 90 per cent of the eligible population.
Regrettably, we are not able to report that this includes our most senior citizens, or over-80s. Otherwise, official Covid death figures would be considerably lower and not so centred among them.
Not long ago, before the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus took over, some experts said the city could consider living with the virus when the rate exceeded 90 per cent.
But that has turned out not to have made any difference to the tsunami of new infections unleashed each day by the fifth wave of the pandemic; or to have stemmed the inexorable rise in the death toll, especially of the elderly, among whom the single-jab rate is still around only 50 per cent.
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Now, rightly, the focus is shifting to a reduction in the risk of serious illness and death. That is a message that must cut through if the remaining resistance to vaccination in the wider community, as well as aged care homes ravaged by infection, is to be overcome.