Is Hong Kong heading for ‘living with Covid’ after latest changes to hospital treatment and quarantine?
- Asymptomatic patients will be treated at the Penny’s Bay quarantine facility rather than in hospital, while close contacts of cases will isolate at home
- Government pandemic adviser Professor David Hui Shu-cheong calls latest raft of measures a ‘solution when there are no other solutions’
With the rising number of cases pushing the city’s long-held, zero-Covid strategies to breaking point, residents are now wondering what the new policies mean and which direction they will lead.
Asymptomatic patients would be treated at the government quarantine site at Penny’s Bay on Lantau Island instead of being sent to hospital, she said. Family members of close contacts, who are required to spend four days of isolation at Penny’s Bay under current rules, would be allowed to do so at home when government sites were filled up. The policy would be extended to the close contacts if the situation worsened, Lam added.
The changes were needed, Hong Kong’s leader maintained, despite public hospitals ramping up capacity to provide a total of 3,500 isolation beds and the city’s 10 quarantine sites now supplying 5,666 units.
Another key change concerned the vaccine pass, which is needed to enter restaurants and entertainment premises. Its use would be extended to other yet-to-be-specified venues and the inoculation requirement would go from one shot to three in the future.
Lam was clear on her stance. While admitting the current coronavirus wave was the city’s most severe one so far, her administration’s adherence to “dynamic zero infections”, a phrase first coined by mainland Chinese authorities, would not change, she said.