Hong Kong can ease pandemic-control regime in 6 to 8 weeks if 2 key conditions met, government adviser says

Hong Kong can ease its tough pandemic-control measures in six to eight weeks at the soonest and relaxation is “preferred” to sticking with the “dynamic-zero” Covid-19 policy, a top government adviser has said, as officials prepare to unveil their strategy to exit the city’s worst coronavirus wave yet.

But Professor Gabriel Leung cautioned his timeline was based on two key conditions: achieving at least 90 per cent full vaccination in the elderly population and procuring a million or more courses of Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid. Both achievements would shield the vulnerable against an expected “exit wave” of infections when social-distancing curbs were lifted, Leung told the Post in an exclusive interview.

“My view is that before the fifth wave largely ends in six to eight weeks, we need to now prepare our road map out of it,” he said. “What we can do now is to forge a consensus and lay out the preparatory work as it’s not like hitting a button and doing it right away.”

As the dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and a top epidemiologist, Leung has been a prominent voice in advising the local administration on the Covid-19 fight since the pandemic began.

Leung expressed his views as city leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor revealed she would announce the “future direction” of the local epidemic response on Sunday at the earliest, with a range of topics to be addressed, including travel restrictions, universal testing, school reopenings and other social-distancing rules.

Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, urged city officials during a high-level meeting in Shenzhen on Wednesday to “plan for the next stage of the pandemic in an orderly fashion”.

Leung’s fellow pandemic adviser, Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, also called for gradual relaxation of social-distancing policies “in the summer” if the local vaccination coverage had hit 95 per cent, in an op-ed piece penned with two other microbiology experts and published in a local newspaper on Thursday.

But Lam rebuffed the idea, saying setting a definitive policy based on a 95 per cent rate was tantamount to “tying up your own hands and legs”.

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Leung’s timeline of six to eight weeks, meaning late April or early May, would be even ahead of Yuen’s.

Explaining his reasoning, Leung said the city had two options. It could stick with the “dynamic-zero” Covid policy after May when infections were expected to drop to below 100 a day and carry out universal testing to cut remaining transmission chains.

Hong Kong could also protect the public by building up a “more long-lasting hybrid immunity” at the opportune time, which consisted of passive immunity induced by vaccination and an active immunity from naturally acquired infection and recovery, he said.

Given social-distancing measures could not remain in place indefinitely, Leung argued authorities should ensure 90 per cent coverage of two doses of the BioNTech vaccine or three shots of the Sinovac jab for the elderly population, especially those living in care homes. The city should also secure a million courses or more of the Paxlovid pill to minimise severe cases and deaths, while also building up the population’s natural immunity once curbs were lifted, he added.

That scenario, if it took place in late April or May, would give people the best chance to build up hybrid immunity before potentially more transmissible or lethal future variants of concern hit, Leung said, citing the emergence of Deltacron in France, the impact of which was still to be ascertained.

“Chinese people have a saying: ‘The night is long and fraught with nightmares’,” Leung said, explaining why six or eight weeks was the right time to make the policy shift.

“The second way is better because we could have a sustained slow burn, where we will have some deaths, but hospitals won’t be flooded and there won’t be many severe cases.”

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As of Thursday, 79.5 per cent of residents aged 60 to 69 had taken two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine. The figure was 66.8 per cent for those aged 70 to 79 and 37.3 per cent for residents aged 80 and above. The government has never disclosed the amount of Paxlovid or Merck’s pill molnupiravir it had bought, citing commercial confidentiality.

Leung said a million courses of Paxlovid would help the estimated 3.5 million residents who had not been infected so far.

Led by Leung, a team of HKU academics previously estimated the city’s fifth wave peaked on March 4 and the actual number of cases stood at around 3.6 million by March 14, with the number of daily infections to fall below 1,000 by the end of April and below 100 by the end of May.

He estimated the overall size of the infected population in the fifth wave would reach around 4.5 million, with 5,102 deaths by the end.

Leung said his two proposed options were based on sound public health grounds and were unrelated to economic or geopolitical concerns or sensitive timetables, such as the chief executive election or handover anniversary on July 1.

Asked whether the ban on flights from nine countries including Britain and the United States could be the first rule lifted, Leung said the restriction should have been eased “a month ago” when there was a rising number of cases in the community, adding a few imported ones would not matter much to the overall situation.

He added the tough 14-day quarantine for arrivals from some virus hotspots could be replaced by seven-day home isolation for those who tested negative before departure and upon arrival. Other precise rules to be relaxed would have to be worked out by the government, he said.