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China Medicine

Hong Kong Lacks the Resources For a China-style Pandemic Response, the City's Leader Says. (nytimes.com) 39

Hong Kong is struggling to get a handle on its worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic, warning that it doesn't have the testing capacity to carry out the strict strategy handed down by Beijing. From a report: In Shenzhen and Shanghai, in mainland China, officials imposed restrictions on millions of people within days of local outbreaks in order to test every single resident. But Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, noted on Monday that her city doesn't have the same ability. "Hong Kong is very different from many mainland cities and therefore we cannot have any comparison," Mrs. Lam told reporters at a news conference. The difference amounts to resources and systems of governance, Mrs. Lam said. Shenzhen and Shanghai can test millions of people a day; Hong Kong's health officials can only test between 200,000 and 300,000 people a day.

Hong Kong, one of the last places in the world that is still trying to get rid of the virus instead of living with it, has reported more than 700,000 cases and 4,066 deaths since late January. It is a strategy that has been dictated by Beijing but one that appears increasingly out of reach for Hong Kong, which continues to hold freedoms that don't exist in the mainland. In the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Xian, officials halted daily life and confined residents to their homes for weeks until there were no more local cases. In Tianjin, they began testing every single resident after just 20 cases of coronavirus were reported. Further separating Hong Kong from the mainland's approach, Mrs. Lam said she would not consider tightening social-distancing measures because she had to take into how residents felt about them.

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Hong Kong Lacks the Resources For a China-style Pandemic Response, the City's Leader Says.

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  • ... over Covid the better. If they're dumb enough to still try and contain this virus when its been endemic for months now then thats up to them (and this approach obviously no longer works) but it hits their economy and thats only good news for the west.

    • Mrs. Lam said she would not consider tightening. After caving to most other China demands this is a surprise turn, in a good way. Her position coincidentally ends June. The renewal could be in jeopardy. Practically China is gearing up for reacting to a deadlier virus strain. The weakening strains seems to be milder and other countries coping with boosters and medicine for those that fall severely Iâ(TM)ll. Still many die but hospitals not overwhelming so much anymore. Mainland mass testing quite the lo
      • Hong Kong has some very outdated covid health policies. I was reading articles where expats were vaccinated but their young kids weren't and then caught covid. At that point they had to decide to wait hour's in line outside in bad weather just to have their kid admitted to hospital and separated from patents. (Most risked not doing that and kids got better) So clearly hong Kong should adjust their covid policy so that only extremely life threatening sick people are admitted to hospital and the rest stay h
  • While China has been successful in terms of limiting the number of cases and deaths from Covid due to their zero-covid approach, that approach can't succeed in the long term because the Chinese vaccines just aren't effective ( https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/12... [cnn.com] ). New Zealand and Australia were able to lock down long enough to vaccinate many people, and will be able to open up. Even then, all Australia and New Zealand did was time shift when the population got sick.

    However, the Chinese vaccine isn't highly

  • She betrayed her own people. Nobody should care about her trials and tribulations until she is behind bars.

    • I don't know how it is today, but in the beginning of the pandemic a lot of wealthy Chinese people traveled to Hong Kong because of the quality of the hospitals there. Needless to say that those travels brought the virus to the common inhabitants of Hong Kong as well.

      Yes, she betrayed her own people, but still I think the common man cares.

  • 1938 cases today [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/]

    In the end they'll only succeed to delay it but not prevent it. Now delaying is a worthwhile goal while vaccines are developed and weaker strains emerge but they'll have to bite the bullet at some point and let it run amok like they did in the rest of the world.
    • So the question is, will the pandemic go full circle and end where it supposedly began? Continuing their zero-C policy while other countries open up, including their also cautious East Asian neighbors, makes this quite an ironic possibility.
  • The policy of zero COVID that was adopted by many countries, including China, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia, among others, has worked well until about the Delta variant ...

    Now with Omicron and its subvariant BA.2, the zero COVID policies are not sufficient to keep it under control.

    Case in point: the current wave of lockdowns in China [archive.ph], since the population does not have either of a) infection acquired immunity or b) vaccine acquired immunity (the two China vaccines were never effective from the very star

    • New Zealand has at least relaxed (reversed?) its policy. The problem with the PRC is that it can't afford the merely chaotic protests that took place in front of the New Zealand parliament. While those were anti-vax protests, the effect of people again dying in the streets could result in far worse social disorder, given the PRC's history with the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protest. The current system of local suppression is the best that can be done at the moment, short of a new national
      • by evanh ( 627108 )

        Definitely not a reversal. So called zero-covid was always a pandemic delaying method, until the vaccine is administered. The relaxation comes after reaching the 90% vaccination levels.

  • The HK government refuse to admit it so far but the truth is: The outbreak in 2022 is caused by their latest "compulsory testing" policy.

    Right before the high number outbreak occur, they locked down an public housing estate, then forced thousands of people living therein to do repeated "compulsory testing". Guess how they do the test? Command everyone go down stairs, line up for many hours in the cold, take off their masks, and then got their noses picked in the "testing station". Repeat it three times i

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