Coronavirus: Hong Kong must rein in spread of Omicron subvariants, boost quarantine capacity to help reunite cross-border families, analysts say
- Key benchmarks include virus’ reproductive rate falling below one and whether more transmissive Omicron subvariants become dominant strain in city, source says
- Politicians hope new health minister will continue pressing mainland authorities to effect more changes
Hong Kong will need to rein in the spread of more transmissible Omicron subvariants and work with Chinese authorities to boost quarantine capacity on both sides if more cross-border families and couples are to be reunited in time for next month’s Qixi Festival, medical experts and politicians have said.
New Secretary for Health Professor Lo Chung-mau on Monday reignited the debate on reopening the border with mainland China, revealing in a blog post marking his first full working day that he had successfully negotiated for more quarantine spaces and a tougher crackdown on profiteers and abusers in Shenzhen.
“Controlling Hong Kong’s epidemic and reducing community infections are the most important elements in increasing cross-border flow and border reopening,” he wrote, adding that cooperation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen could reunite families like the festival’s legendary lovebirds, Zhinu the weaver girl and Niulang the cowherd, during the Chinese Valentine’s Day of Qixi, which falls on August 4 this year.
But Lo left open the question as to how exactly he planned to achieve the goal of re-establishing travel with the mainland with fewer quarantine curbs, or how to bring down infection numbers in Hong Kong.
A source familiar with the government’s internal assessment told the Post on Tuesday that a key benchmark in measuring whether the local epidemic situation had eased was when the virus’ reproductive rate – meaning the estimated number of people each Covid-19 patient could infect on average – was less than one and the daily caseload started falling.
The latest rate, at 1.41, suggested a slowly rising trend.
Another metric was whether the more transmissive Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 would become a dominant strain in the community, the source added.