Opinion | It’s hard to celebrate Lunar New Year from the fires of ‘zero Covid’ purgatory
- Hong Kong has been forced to watch much of the world open up while it remains stuck between ‘zero Covid’ and living with the virus
- It is difficult to feel festive while families are separated and people fear for their jobs and health as the government scrambles for a response
“We have the next five years as the last window of opportunities for Hong Kong,” Leung said. He was referring the city’s diminishing role as an intermediary between the mainland and the rest of the world.
We have been watching one world open up – with hiccups, of course – to make Covid-19 a part of normal life while trying to achieve the increasingly impossible goal of stopping the virus from being communicable, at least not within our community so we can open our borders with the mainland.
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Coronavirus: ‘exponential’ outbreak of Omicron triggers lockdowns in Hong Kong housing blocks
Our position as intermediary might have made us the envy of many economies before the pandemic. Now, though, Hong Kong is a prime example of being suspended between two very different worlds and, even worse, cut off from opening up to either.
