Hong Kong, Europe Brief News – Hong Kong holds the world’s worst death rate for COVID-19.
The country is witnessing the worst wave of the coronavirus pandemic, according to health experts.
Faced with unprecedented spread of the omicron variant, the country has seen cases spiral, which has led authorities to impose tough measures and compulsory testing.
But cases are finally beginning to drop, health experts say.
Gabriel Leung, Dean of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, has cited an updated study from the university stating the number of coronavirus cases peaked last week.
Last week, the country recorded a daily record high of 56,827 new coronavirus cases. The increasing number of positive cases in recent months has prompted residents to scramble for goods on supermarket shelves. The government has sent mixed messages over a potential citywide lockdown.
In recent days, however, those infection numbers have dropped. Hong Kong recorded at least 28,475 cases Tuesday, the fourth day since new infections were below 50,000.
Isolated Hong Kong
As the number of sick has mushroomed, Hong Kong is engulfed in a crisis that it sought to avoid by isolating itself from the rest of the world using strict travel restrictions and quarantines.
Help lines go unanswered, ambulances take hours to come, patients cram into hospitals and mortuaries are running out of space. In one instance, a woman had to bring feeding tubes for an elderly relative treated for Covid-19 at a public hospital. Cases are rampant in the city’s crowded housing developments and nursing homes, which have accounted for about 60% of deaths.
Hong Kong has contributed to its predicament by squandering months of zero cases without preparing enough for an inevitable outbreak.
“We simply did not do enough to protect our most vulnerable citizens,” said Karen Grépin, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health.
Public health experts repeatedly told the government it needed to do more than rely on strict border controls and contact-tracing. They urged an exit plan from Zero-Covid policies such as the one Singapore developed. Open up slowly once the most vulnerable are protected with vaccines to keep fatalities low.
