Letters | Hong Kong’s Covid-19 outbreak: stop deflecting blame onto Cathay Pacific and vaccine companies

Readers take issue with a government adviser’s characterisation of Hong Kong’s latest Covid-19 outbreak, criticise Hongkongers who resisted getting the jab, and reflect on the lack of consensus in society on a pandemic exit strategy

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People queue for Covid-19 tests at a sports ground in Tuen Mun on January 13. Photo: May Tse

Published: 7:00am, 15 Jan 2022

I write in response to comments by Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong’s faculty of medicine, in your report, “New untraceable case has city behind in Omicron race” (January 10).

Dr Leung’s deflection of the blame for Hong Kong’s Omicron outbreak onto Cathay Pacific and pharmaceutical companies is outrageous. Hong Kong has managed to achieve zero local transmission for months and there has been little progress made regarding getting the elderly vaccinated, which is the only way out of this pandemic.

It is 100 per cent the government’s fault for not vaccinating the elderly over the last year given the inevitable Covid-19 breach that would have happened one way or another. The irony is that Cathay Pacific has done more than the government to increase the vaccination rate.

Moreover, 21 days in isolation is unnecessary and unscientific; this is still the case for residents arriving from abroad. Given the incubation period for Omicron is three to five days, according to some studies, a far shorter isolation period is enough to catch the virus as it incubates. Even the newly implemented 14-day “close contact” quarantine is excessive.

Lowering the quarantine time would increase capacity for the government’s “close contact” quarantine policy, but that’s not all. Sticking people in a room for 21 days affects their mental and physical health. The constant unknown of the daily testing results weighs on every quarantine resident’s mind. The possibility that you could be one of the asymptomatic people with the virus sitting in hospital for weeks affects your well-being.

Lastly, I would like to touch on the incredible amount of monetary and environmental waste that this quarantine system creates. At Penny’s Bay where I am now in quarantine, every test conducted requires a new set of gloves. I’m given two plastic bottles of water every day even if I do not need it. Every meal is packaged in takeaway plastic containers, each piece of fruit is covered in plastic wrapping. Hong Kong will be one giant landfill before the pandemic comes to an end.