Hong Kong is home to one of the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world. What went wrong?
deaths across a population of nearly seven and a half million people. Then Omicron and its more contagious cousin, B.A.2, arrived. Since then, more than-19 death rates in the world. The scenes are both tragic and familiar: triage tents outside hospitals; crematoriums full and morgues overflowing; health-care workers and a health-care system on the brink.
Hong Kong’s experience is further proof that understanding a variant’s severity in isolation is a fool’s errand. The virulence of any pathogen depends not just on its own qualities but on the preparedness of the human immune system. A variant that scarcely registers in a person with a booster shot and a prior infection can rapidly sicken and kill an immunologically naïve individual.
“There were also very extensive contact-tracing and isolation programs. In the past, when things got bad—I’m talking a hundred cases a day, that was our ‘bad’—this would trigger universal testing of certain high-risk populations, like taxi-drivers, restaurant workers, or foreign domestic helpers. If somebody got—they had to isolate in a negative-pressure room in a hospital. It was the law: isolation at home was not an option.
wards are divided into cubicles. Each cubicle houses anywhere between four and ten patients. You have all these beds smushed close together. The space between them is maybe forty or sixty centimetres. We’re all overwhelmed by what’s going on in these wards. We have doctors breaking down in public. The stress, especially in intensive care, is so heavy. You literally have to decide who lives and who dies.
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