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Hong Kong might impose a China-style laborious lockdown that confines individuals to their properties, authorities signalled Monday, with town’s zero-Covid technique in tatters and our bodies piling up in hospitals.
Two years of strict zero-Covid insurance policies saved the coronavirus largely bay however a breakthrough of the extremely transmissible Omicron variant uncovered how little authorities had completed to arrange for a mass outbreak.
Hong Kong chief Carrie Lam beforehand dominated out a citywide lockdown and as a substitute has ordered all 7.4 million residents to be examined in March.
However in a U-turn, well being secretary Sophia Chan confirmed on Monday that it was nonetheless an possibility.
Requested by a presenter at Business Radio whether or not a lockdown was nonetheless dominated out she replied: “No. We’re nonetheless discussing.”
“From a public well being perspective, to convey out the most effective impact of obligatory common testing, we have to cut back individuals’s actions to some extent,” she added.
Chan’s feedback got here a day after Li Dachuan, a senior mainland official concerned in a joint taskforce with Hong Kong authorities, described a lockdown as “probably the most ideally suited and greatest method to attain the most effective impact of common assessments”.
Our bodies in hospital
The revelation provides contemporary uncertainty and anxiousness for residents and companies in a metropolis gripped by the form of chaos that was extra acquainted at first of the pandemic.
Hong Kong has now recorded 193,000 instances and 636 deaths within the present wave since December 31.
That compares to only 12,000 infections and 205 deaths for the entire of the remainder of the pandemic.
Hospitals have been stretched to breaking level for weeks and on Sunday officers revealed our bodies are piling up at hospitals as a result of mortuaries are full.
“At this second, we face an issue of transportation of lifeless our bodies from hospital to public mortuary,” Hospital Authority chief supervisor Lau Ka-hin informed reporters.
“That’s why there are some our bodies who had been initially deliberate to be transported to public mortuary, however stayed in hospital.”
Excessive mortality price
Hong Kong’s seven-day common demise price is at present operating at round eight per a million individuals.
That compares with 5 per million for america, 1.80 for Britain and 1.36 for Singapore which, like Hong Kong, initially opted for zero-Covid however shifted extra not too long ago to a mitigation technique and reopening to the broader world.
Officers have revealed that 91 % of those that have died within the present wave weren’t absolutely vaccinated.
The overwhelming majority of the lifeless — 92 % — are individuals aged 60 or above with the median age 84 years previous because the virus rips by care properties within the densely populated metropolis.
Regardless of ample provides Hong Kong had a dismal vaccination price amongst over-70s earlier than Omicron struck.
China is now more and more calling the pictures on Hong Kong’s response with the joint taskforce working out of the neighbouring metropolis of Shenzhen.
Mainland crews are engaged on setting up a collection of momentary hospitals and isolation wards for the contaminated, though the present caseload far outstrips provide.
Amongst these advising the federal government is Liang Wannian, a senior mainland official that the South China Morning Publish reported was arriving in Hong Kong on Monday.
Liang was a key architect of the profitable two-month lengthy lockdown in Wuhan the place the coronavirus first emerged, a technique China has continued to deploy in different cities as quickly as instances are detected.
Wuhan’s official toll was 53,000 instances and it took two months to suppress with a full lockdown.
Hong Kong has recorded that many instances in simply two days and can also be battling a way more infectious variant.
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