For two years, Hong Kong successfully insulated most of its residents from COVID-19, even going nearly three months late last year without a single locally spread case.
The Hong Kong experience may also hold lessons for mainlandand its decision on when to re-open its borders and eliminate a two- to three-week quarantine requirement for anybody entering the country. Only a small proportion of the population has been infected, thanks to the Communist Party's strict zero-COVID approach of mass testing and lockdowns.
Construction teams from the mainland are rushing to build two permanent and four temporary isolation and treatment centers to handle more than 20,000 patients in an effort reminiscent of the early days of the virus when China threw up two temporary hospitals in the city of Wuhan in a matter of days. Scientists believe that the omicron variant is milder than the delta version of the virus. But Hong Kong’s situation is nearly unique. In other nations where the omicron variant spread, people had immunity from vaccines or previous infections, and this blunted the severity of the disease.expert at University of Southampton, fears that it may have a “worryingly high burden of severe COVID-19 in coming weeks”.
“But now it gets worse and so I decided to come and get vaccinated," she said."It protects not only myself but also my family members.” The ultra-contagious nature of the omicron variant means that unless you have incredibly stringent lockdown measures, mask-wearing and social distancing norms, you’re not going to stem the spread, said Dr. Jimmy Whitworth, an infectious diseases expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
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