Hong Kong government, not Cathay Pacific, responsible for city’s Covid-19 fight

Hong Kong is on the verge of a fifth wave of Covid-19. However, this outbreak could have been prevented if the government quickly decided to withdraw the hotel quarantine exemption for aircrew. A media report pointed out that the government had lost at least two crucial opportunities in the last two months to keep the virus from spreading into the community.

I understand why the government decided to give aircrew special treatment, especially those involved in cargo operations. Hong Kong is already seeing rises in prices of daily necessities, including food. However, the government should be able to balance these interests, including the interests of businesses, with those of public health.

The government seems to have put too much faith in Cathay Pacific to ensure its aircrew follow quarantine rules. Those rules required crew to isolate at home for three days. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor summoned Cathay’s chairman and CEO and expressed the government’s dissatisfaction with the staff’s breaches of the isolation rule.

I can imagine Lam’s despair at this failure of the virus prevention strategy at a time when reopening of the border with the mainland appeared imminent. However, she should realise that while Cathay Pacific is required to follow the rules, the government is responsible for the well-being of 7 million Hong Kong residents.

Hong Kong’s laissez-faire style of governance allowed it to achieve the status of “Asia’s World City” in the past two decades, but the government cannot stand on the sidelines when infection control is the need of the hour.

Finally, I would like to praise Hong Kong residents for doing their duty by complying with compulsory testing and quarantine orders, even during the end-of-year holidays, including those who do not support the current government.

Liao Sizhe, Sha Tin

Lam in no position to blame Cathay Pacific

It is unacceptable that Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor chastised Cathay Pacific chairman Patrick Healy and CEO Augustus Tang Kin-wing, summoning them to her office to express her government’s “strong dissatisfaction” and stating that there is no excuse for management not to be blamed for the actions of their staff.

She then absolved herself of blame over similar behaviour from her own ministers, stating she would not take responsibility for their personal wrongdoing. This reeks of hypocrisy.

Cathay Pacific has a legacy of service to Hong Kong that goes far beyond this chief executive’s tenure. Cathay has for decades served the aspirations and dreams of Hong Kong and its residents. It is wrong to condemn an airline that, despite monumental hardship, has kept families connected and cargo moving throughout the pandemic.

Humiliation is neither warranted nor justified from a chief executive quick to apportion blame to others and slow to accept she, as head of the government, should publicly apologise for the actions of her ministers.

Mark Peaker, The Peak

Increase vaccination centres to stop fifth wave

The Hong Kong government is going to extreme lengths and taking extraordinary measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Huge sums of money are spent on testing and retesting the populace and locking them down as and when necessary, despite the fact that a good chunk of the population has not even taken the two doses required to be fully vaccinated, leave alone the booster dose.

I wanted to obtain boosters for my family, but all government vaccination centres except those far from where I live showed up as full until January 21. The earliest appointment available at the handful of private vaccination centres that I checked was in February.

In the face of this and an impending fifth wave, why can’t the government increase the number of public and private vaccination centres? In many countries in the West, vaccines are delivered by health care personnel in pharmacies and health centres. We should follow suit and make vaccines more freely available to increase uptake and avoid further closures and lockdowns, which we are all fed up with.

Lakshman Samaranayake, Pok Fu Lam

Integrate iAM Smart to improve health code

With the recent Omicron variant cases once again delaying the reopening of the mainland border, we hope the government can take the time to improve the health code platform for travelling to the mainland. While the system has signed up more than half a million users as of January 2, it is regrettable that residents cannot use iAM Smart, the online authentication platform developed by the government, to apply for the health code.

Although iAM Smart can verify users’ identities and save them the trouble of filling in the form, it cannot provide the proof of address one is asked for when applying for the health code. We urge the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer to upgrade iAM Smart so it can verify users’ residential addresses with banks and utility companies that are already connected to the platform.

The current health code system only allows registrants to reset forgotten passwords through SMS. Integration with iAM Smart will remove the hassle of password management and serve the community more efficiently.

Health code users will also log into the health code platform again in LeaveHomeSafe to upload their visit logs. To simplify the process and to echo your correspondents’ call for improving contact tracing (“Upgrade ‘Leave Home Safe’ app in view of potential wave”, December 29), we urge the government to require all LeaveHomeSafe users to log in with iAM Smart.

Juanjuan Li and Huiya Shi, Kowloon Tong