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Coronavirus: Hong Kong urged to maintain ‘dynamic zero-Covid’ policy, with Beijing officials and state media warning shift will mean disaster for city

  • Strategy embodies anti-epidemic concept that ‘prioritises people and lives, which has also been proven to achieve maximum results with minimum cost’, People’s Daily says
  • Shift away from policy will affect resumption of quarantine-free travel with the mainland, it warns

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The government has no choice but to continue with its current policy of lockdowns and quarantine, an Executive Council member says. Photo: Jelly Tse
Beijing officials and state media have been urging Hong Kong to stick with the “dynamic zero-Covid” strategy, warning that any shift towards “living with the virus” will result in disaster for the city and the deferment of any resumption of quarantine-free travel with mainland China.
The warnings, from a senior mainland health official and the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, came as Hong Kong reported 614 new coronavirus infections on Monday, the highest daily number since the pandemic began two years ago.

“The so-called ‘living with the virus’ strategy has not been scientifically proven. Implementing it will bring enormous pressure on the medical system, not to mention resumption of quarantine-free travel with the mainland,” People’s Daily said in a commentary.

02:08

Hong Kong records 614 Covid cases as post-Lunar New Year surge continues

Hong Kong records 614 Covid cases as post-Lunar New Year surge continues

Ahead of a meeting of the Executive Council, the Hong Kong leader’s de facto cabinet, member Dr Lam Ching-choi told the Post the city did not have the conditions to relax social-distancing measures or open up unless the vaccination rate – including for the elderly – reached 90 per cent. Currently it sits at around 80 per cent of the overall eligible population but the rate is much lower among the elderly.

Former Hospital Authority chief executive Leung Pak-yin, however, said further tightening measures aimlessly would not be effective in taming the fifth wave – fuelled by the highly contagious Omicron variant – as he expected the daily caseload to reach four digits within three days.

Long lines form as residents wait at a mobile testing station in Hong Kong. Photo: Felix Wong
Long lines form as residents wait at a mobile testing station in Hong Kong. Photo: Felix Wong

He added that whether one could cross the border without quarantining should not be restrained by the government’s anti-epidemic strategy but his or her own infection risk.

Natalie is an award-winning journalist specialising in policy analysis with a focus on Hong Kong politics. She also moderates SCMP events and is passionate about video storytelling. She is the co-author of Post Portraits – Hong Kong’s 25 years of change through the lens of the South China Morning Post (SCMP Publishers, 2023). Previously, she worked for i-Cable News (HK) and BBC Chinese (London).
Lilian joined the Post in 2019 as a senior reporter covering Hong Kong politics, Hong Kong-mainland issues, as well as housing and land policies. She started her career at Ming Pao in 2010 and was then a principal reporter at i-Cable News. She has won awards for her reports on a major historic relic discovery in Hong Kong, as well as vote-rigging problems in local elections.
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