More than a third of Hong Kong residents will be in isolation next month and more than half will have had Covid-19 by April unless containment policies are strengthened, say health experts who warn that the city’s hospitals and quarantine facilities will soon be overwhelmed.
New daily Covid cases will peak at almost 183,000 in March and total cumulative infections could hit 4.5mn in the city of 7.4mn in April, according to research published by the University of Hong Kong (HKU).
“In the absence of much more intensive [restrictions], akin to a ‘lockdown’, the trajectory of the fifth wave is unlikely to change substantially from its current course,” the researchers added.
Hong Kong has recorded relatively few infections or deaths for most of the pandemic, with officials reporting about 12,600 total cases in December.
But the territory is now being pummeled by the Omicron variant of coronavirus, prompting authorities to impose the toughest restrictions since the start of the pandemic to deal with the worst outbreak in China. The measures have made it increasingly difficult for global companies to operate in the financial centre.
Hong Kong has logged more than 53,000 new infections since January and many health experts warn that the actual number could be many times higher because of a testing backlog.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, announced on Tuesday that the city would conduct mandatory testing for all residents from March. She also said summer break for schools would be brought forward to March 4 and classes would resume in mid-April following the Easter break, in the hope that the worst of the latest wave had passed.
The Hong Kong government has been ordered by Chinese president Xi Jinping to adhere to Beijing’s zero-Covid policy, which requires local authorities to isolate infected patients — even if they have only mild symptoms or are asymptomatic — as well as close contacts.
“No matter what different political views you have, in the battle between humans and the virus . . . the most important thing is human lives,” Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s top medical advisers, said in a video released late on Monday night.
At the peak of the Omicron outbreak, the number of people in isolation at the same time could reach 2.5mn, comprising of 625,000 infected individuals and 1.9mn close contacts, according to the HKU research.
The researchers forecast that total deaths from the pandemic could hit 3,200 by mid-May. Authorities reported that at least 350 people had died from Covid since the virus first emerged in Wuhan in early 2020, including 145 in the latest wave.
Hong Kong has about 7,000 isolation beds and is racing to complete facilities to provide another 30,000.
“Hong Kong’s outbreak is of a scale that has not been seen in any city in [China],” said Leung Chi-chiu, a respiratory diseases expert. “We have to look at the challenges and adjust our containment measures accordingly . . . We need to use whatever way [we can] to slow down the spread of the virus.”
Gabriel Leung, dean of medicine at HKU who headed the research team, said more stringent restrictions, including a lockdown, should be considered.
“We know that it is difficult to carry out a Wuhan-style lockdown, which is not feasible in Hong Kong,” Leung said. “But a lockdown [here] could be in the form of only allowing people to go out for work, shopping [for] groceries weekly or for critical reasons.”
Tens of thousands of residents have left Hong Kong over the past month to escape the latest wave of infections.
Additional reporting by Tom Mitchell in Singapore
Hong Kong’s Covid policy risks forcing a third of residents to isolate, warn experts
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