CHAIRMAN'S MESSAGE Dear Members As we reach the end of April it feels like the pandemic’s 5th wave is at last in the rear-view mirror. The sumptuary social restrictions and border regulations imposed at the start of the year are slowly coming off and, as a result, Hong Kong is coming back. The case statistics are also looking better. When I wrote the last Magazine Message at the end of February, we were clocking 70,000 new cases and 280 deaths a day. Today we are clocking a seven day average of 420 new cases and 10 deaths. Every death is a tragedy and we should mourn the untimely passing of all our fellow citizens. On the other hand the 5th wave proved a great deal more manageable and a great deal less calamitous than the pundits were predicting even a few weeks ago. The vaccination statistics have also been a beneficiary of the 5th wave. At the end of January the seven day average of first doses administered was around 8,000. This number rose rapidly to around 36,000 in mid-February. Today 91% of the population have had at least one dose - although there is a way to go for the 3-11 year-olds (70%) and the over 80’s (64%). In early January the Government’s response to stem the spread of the virus kicked in with alarming bursts of energy. This resulted in a series of announcements to restrict borders and people, a rollout of testing programmes and an undertaking to build isolation facilities, the scale of which would have been the envy of the ancient Egyptians. At the Chamber we lobbied against what we saw as the excesses of these measures. We consulted widely by holding a virtual Town Hall with members and gathering feedback through the sub-committees particularly impacted (for example, our excellent Education Committee). We set up a COVID sub-committee at GenCom to consolidate and prioritise the membership concerns. The end result was a letter that we sent to the Chief Executive on 9th March [link here] and made available
to members very quickly thereafter. We also spoke to senior SAR officials and to representatives from the mainland Ministry of Foreign Affairs to express our concerns directly. It was clear that they were in listening mode and concerned to understand what was really happening at the coal face. In my time as Chairman I have never received quite so many texts, emails, messages and calls from members and business leaders as I did in response to our letter, to thank us for our outspokenness. I am not able to judge the impact of our letter. I am able to judge the subsequent actions taken by the Government which included : Putting the Comprehensive Universal Testing proposal on hold; Permitting home isolation for mild or asymptomatic cases; Reducing quarantine for arrivals from 14 to 7 days; Lifting the flight bans and adjusting the flight suspension mechanisms; Allowing international schools to keep teaching on-line and moving to in-person tuition after the Easter holidays; Clarifying that parents and children would only be separated where cases had to be treated in ICU’s; Relaunching the Employment Support Scheme (“ESS”) for SME’s. All these were measures that the Chamber had called for in our letter. But we are not quite home and dry yet. The flight XXXXXXX 02
