EDITORIALS
HONG KONG ZERO COVID: By: Colin Chau Photography by: Tallie Lin Layout by: Jocelyn Ho As residents of Hong Kong, we have all experienced the effects of Hong Kong’s Zero Covid policy, whether that be positive or negative. Until 2022, the HKSAR government mostly prevented the spread of Covid-19 in our city. Of course, this all ended in January 2022, which begs the question: In Hong Kong, has Zero Covid been an overall positive or negative? As a health policy, the most obvious way to analyze Zero Covid is through the lens of healthcare, its intended beneficiary. The initial benefits of Zero Covid were undeniably high - in both China and Hong Kong, cases and deaths were minimized. In the first and second waves, the government held cases under 5000, a remarkably low number, especially given Hong Kong’s extreme density, which could potentially have allowed for easy transmission amongst the population. Through the responsible hygiene habits of the populace (such as mask-wearing) as well as strict government social distancing policies (ie. dining bans, 2 persons to a table etc.), Hong Kong was able to prevent the mass spread of Covid-19. This same idea was mirrored in China - their Zero-Covid policy prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths, especially from their large elderly population. This was contrasted on the world scale by the events occuring in the US and Europe,
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ISSUE 26
An Analysis
where cases were exploding into the tens of thousands a day, ultimately resulting in thousands of deaths in hospitals and where conservatives and liberals alike were unwilling to comply with social distancing and mask wearing orders. Seeing this from Hong Kong was truly a sight - at the time, I thought that the sheer stupidity of not locking down was ridiculous. It can clearly be seen that tens of thousands of Hong Kong lives were saved by this policy, especially taking into the account the large elderly population of Hong Kong. This Zero Covid policy was ultimately able to defeat Covid in Hong Kong for 4 waves, a feat only achieved elsewhere by China and Taiwan. In the spring of 2021, the vaccines were rolled out. In Hong Kong, two jabs were made available to the public: the Chinesemade CoronaVac (Sinovac) and the German Comirnaty (Pfizer-Biontech). Both of these vaccines proved effective in the early stages, being able to reduce deaths significantly, and had a high chance of preventing infections too. People in Western countries vaccinated in droves after seeing the horrors of Covid. Of course, there were massive
exceptions to this in the US, but overall the rate of vaccination grew quickly: 50% of the eligible US population was vaccinated by the end of the summer, drastically reducing the number of deaths. Yet, in Hong Kong, the situation was completely different. By the end of August 2021, only 36% of the city was fully vaccinated, a very low figure compared to other Asian countries. For example, Singapore was 64% fully vaccinated at this time. Likely, all the safety provided by Zero Covid resulted in people not getting vaccinated; they reasoned that there was no need to get vaccinated when there was no risk of infection. Many others were scared off the vaccines by their possible side effects which were hyped up by media such as HK01. Hence, Zero Covid was a ticking time bomb; if a deadlier or more infectious variant were to spread in Hong Kong, it would be a disaster due to the low vaccination rate. It was only a matter of time before the disaster hit, in the form of Omicron. Omicron, though less likely to lead to severe illness,was an extremely infectious variant, and it rapidly made its way into Hong Kong through infected air crew and transmission at a designated
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