More criticism and condemnation rained down from former officials, business moguls and senior counsel, with former government adviser Jack Wong Chack-kie urging Lam to “resign in shame”. Even former commerce minister Frederick Ma Si-hang and Ronnie Chan Chi-chung, chairman of Hang Lung Properties, both usually circumspect about government matters, weighed in.

Ma said the governing team’s handling of the fifth wave exposed “all kinds of administrative deficiencies” while Chan bemoaned a leadership that lacked humility and was full of unfounded self-confidence.

Then came news that more than half of the 16 non-official members of the Executive Council, Lam’s de facto cabinet, were planning a petition warning that unending stringent pandemic-control measures had undermined Hong Kong’s status as an international financial centre.

A source said the petition was eventually shelved and Exco convenor Bernard Chan conveyed their message to Lam.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam faces grilling over Covid crisis exit strategy

Trying to strike a more apologetic tone in recent days, the chief executive appealed for sympathy for herself and her administration, saying the government was very sad over the high death toll in the fifth wave – reaching more than 7,000 fatalities by Sunday.

So far, however, only Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong had openly admitted his bureau had failed to provide the necessary care for the elderly.

“From the beginning of the pandemic until now, we all know the responsibility of taking care of the elderly, especially those at care homes, must lie on the Labour and Welfare Bureau,” he said on Saturday.

Experts told the Post the raging fifth wave of infections exposed not only Lam’s poor leadership, but also the weaknesses of the government as a whole, from its inability to plan ahead, coordinate civil servants and departments and disseminate information, to its failure in offering solutions even with help from Beijing.

“We need trustworthy, empathetic leaders, who can anticipate problems and design novel solutions in a crisis,” said Professor John Burns, who specialises in public administration. “Is there a 24/7 task force in the Chief Executive’s Office managing this crisis?”

Although Lam described her role as the “commander in chief” steering the government’s fight against the pandemic, there appeared to be no established centre for crisis control, he said. She only began holding daily press briefings this month, more than two months into the fifth wave.

‘Astronomical death toll’ price of Hong Kong’s failure to prepare for fifth wave

Burns, an emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong, said: “Effective governance requires leadership. Unfortunately, our leaders lack the ability to mobilise their own colleagues and the people to win this war. Rather, they value hierarchy and bureaucratic process above all else.”

Pro-establishment observers expected Beijing to initiate a thorough review of Hong Kong’s management of the pandemic once the current wave subsided. On Sunday, Lam agreed that a probe on the outbreak should be done by the next administration set to be sworn into office in July.

Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said Beijing would not only demand improvements in the city’s crisis management, but also place greater emphasis on identifying more capable talent for the next administration.

Ma earlier told the Post there was a need to form a “competent governing team” and to use the “right people” to solve deep-seated problems.

‘Failure to anticipate crisis, act fast’

In less than three months, more than a million cases and over 7,000 deaths were recorded in Hong Kong’s soaring fifth wave of Covid-19 infections.

This was after the city succeeded in keeping down infections and deaths for most of the two years since the pandemic began. Through much of last year, daily infections stayed in the single or low double digits and were mostly imported.

Experts said it was plain that the government failed to anticipate a “worst-case” scenario, and was caught unprepared when the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus tore through the community.

Cross-departmental cooperation only accelerated after city officials met mainland Chinese authorities in mid-February, by which time Hong Kong was seeing more than 1,000 daily infections.

Five task forces were then set up, each headed by a different secretary, but there were serious delays in delivering help to about 300,000 people isolated at home.

A website for people to register their rapid antigen test results was also postponed. Many who tested positive had no choice but to isolate at home and self-medicate without government help.

Burns said Hong Kong could not merely wait for instructions from Beijing.

“A stronger state anticipates, leads and mobilises,” he said. “A stronger state would have rolled out vaccination mandates that meant something, mass vaccinated the elderly at home and in care centres, and built the emergency isolation and testing capacities that we are only now seeing.”

The government’s analytical capacities were good, he said, but the pandemic exposed its inability to deliver. Departments were not working effectively with one another, and there was no centralised task force to fight the war.

Omicron has brought Hong Kong to its knees. How did it all go wrong?

In many other places, the Sars outbreak of 2003 led governments to set up interdepartmental coordination mechanisms to deal with future health crises. In Taiwan, for example, the Central Epidemic Command Centre established in 2005 was activated during the swine flu pandemic of 2009 and again during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Professor Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, said Hong Kong did not take necessary measures to minimise the impact of a new wave of Covid-19 infections, such as boosting vaccination and improving infrastructure such as hospital beds and isolation capacities.

“How could the government of a very wealthy and developed city like Hong Kong be so unprepared, if it was even moderately competent?” he asked.

Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole delegate to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, pointed to the situation in neighbouring Shenzhen and said mainland authorities had been more farsighted.

Mainland officials acted swiftly to lock down Shenzhen for a week and isolate patients earlier this month, when the number of cases hit double digits.

“They wouldn’t sit still and wait, the way we let infections spin out of control,” he said.

City stumbled despite help from Beijing

Think tank chief Lau said the central government stepped in after receiving a plea for help from Hong Kong. Beijing got mainland experts to help analyse virus strains in the city, sent manpower to build quarantine and isolation facilities, and supplied test kits and virus equipment.

All this was done swiftly, only for the Hong Kong government to stumble as it struggled with the worsening situation.

When city leader Lam announced on Monday that the mass screening exercise would be postponed, the pro-establishment camp accused her of pouring all the help from Beijing down the drain.

Lau said he believed Beijing stepped in because it was disappointed that Lam’s government had failed to govern well even after opposition forces were quashed following the introduction of the national security law and electoral reforms last year.

He said this distrust had led Hongkongers to believe the use of mainland-produced vaccines and the government’s determination to stick with the “Covid-zero” policy were designed to please Beijing.

“There is a sense local officials must continuously look over their shoulders for the approval of outspoken mainland officials and a sense among the public that mainland officials are calling the shots behind the scenes,” he said.

Where’s the wartime leadership?

Belatedly, Lam has tried to demonstrate that she remains in charge.

Since February, she has attended no fewer than 26 media sessions and made numerous public appearances, including welcoming the first train bringing pandemic assistance from the mainland and visiting a Chinese telemedicine centre in Tuen Mun.

Despite her efforts, former transport and housing minister Anthony Cheung Bing-leung decried the “paucity of crisis discourse”, saying the government had failed from the start to address issues Hongkongers were most concerned about, such as how their lives would be affected by the pandemic.

“Communication with the public is not a matter of just telling what the government would like people to know, but also responding to what the people would like to know,” he told the Post.

On the issue of universal screening, for example, he said Lam had changed her position at least twice over the past month.

After months of rejecting the idea, she announced on February 22 that mass screening of everyone in the city would be carried out in March. That triggered panic buying by Hongkongers, while some foreigners and businesspeople made plans to leave the city.

Then, on Monday, Lam announced that the exercise was being suspended as the focus was on saving lives, not mass testing.

This gave the impression the government was flip-flopping, said Cheung, now an academic specialising in public administration.

HKU’s Burns said the lack of a “wartime leadership” was a problem and it affected the city’s ability to weather the current crisis.

“Since 1997, no leader has had the capacity to mobilise Hong Kong people,” he said. “Our leaders, and especially the current chief executive, are mired in bureaucratic processes and moved only by hierarchy.”

Questioning the lack of accountability, he said: “Mainland mayors are fired for mismanaging Covid, [but] not our leaders.”

Hong Kong’s latest Covid-19 rules for travel and social distancing

On Sunday, Lam stopped short of addressing who should be held responsible for the crisis, only saying that she welcomed an investigation being conducted into the city’s handling of the pandemic when the fifth wave subsided, and offered herself in an advisory role.

“We are still in the pandemic, and we are not yet fully confident that we can come out from this outbreak in the short term,” she said.

“So as the incumbent chief executive, I don’t think that we should be distracted by such a large-scale review. I believe the next term of government will handle this seriously, and if it needs my advice as the official bearing the main responsibility, I am happy to offer it.”

Lawmaker Chan Yung, of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said that compared with the 2009 swine flu pandemic, city officials had been slow in their response to the latest wave of Covid-19 infections.

He recalled that after Hong Kong reported the first swine flu case in Asia, the administration of then leader Donald Tsang Yam-kuen swiftly sealed off hotels where infected individuals had stayed and traced contacts. The pandemic lasted half a year, with about 32,000 cases in the city.

He said Hong Kong authorities should have sought help from Beijing sooner to tackle the manpower shortages in the fifth wave, before the local healthcare system was overwhelmed.

The experts agreed that a thorough review of Hong Kong’s Covid-19 experience was called for once the current wave subsided.

Burns said it should look at fundamental changes in the structure of governance, the sustainability of the city’s public health system, agility of the Hospital Authority, and the interface between the public and private healthcare sectors, including care homes for the elderly.

The last major reform of the civil service which took place a generation ago focused on cost cutting, not on improving the quality of service to the public.

Apart from recruiting and promoting those with a passion for public service, the government should also prioritise results rather than bureaucratic processes.

“This means highly valuing entrepreneurship and skills, while the government should recruit from a much wider section of Chinese society, beyond the narrow confines of the city,” Burns said.

Hong Kong chief executive election confirmed for May 8

Lau, from the pro-Beijing think tank, agreed that a complete review was necessary to improve the quality of governance.

“The new team should be able to take up their responsibilities with perseverance, courage and the ability to execute those responsibilities,” Lau said. “I believe many of them will be picked from outside the civil service.

“I will not predict if Lam will stay or not. Beijing will have the answer soon as it is more anxious than us.”

Additional reporting by Gary Cheung and Natalie Wong