Coronavirus: veteran mainland Chinese medical expert urges Hongkongers to prioritise protecting elderly, put politics aside
- Zhong Nanshan, 85, worked closely with local experts in the battle against the Sars epidemic almost two decades ago
- In his video, he called on the elderly to get vaccinated, and for the city to build more makeshift medical facilities
Veteran Chinese infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan has called on Hongkongers to put politics aside and prioritise protecting the elderly from a surging fifth wave of coronavirus infections, or else the city risks a significant jump in its pandemic-related mortality rate.
“What we cannot bear is a large number of deaths resulting from infections of the elderly. Therefore, we have to keep striving for a ‘dynamic zero-infection’ policy,” the 85-year-old said in a rare appeal on Monday night.
His message came hours before local authorities on Tuesday revealed that more than 300 residential care homes had so far reported Covid-19 cases, involving over 230 staff and more than 820 residents. Elderly residents in nursing homes have accounted for 63 out of 102 deaths in the fifth wave of cases.
Zhong said there were four main ways for the government and Hongkongers to fight the highly transmissible Omicron variant: minimise the risk of infection on a personal level; inform authorities in the case of positive test results; isolate all confirmed patients in a timely manner; and centralise all serious cases in designated hospitals for treatment.
Citing some overseas statistics, Zhong also encouraged vulnerable seniors to get vaccinated, saying the dynamic zero infection strategy, which originated on the mainland, was aimed at preventing deaths among the elderly.
“My personal opinion is no matter how different your political views are, the greatest human rights are people’s lives and health when we talk about the battle against the coronavirus,” he said in Cantonese in a pre-recorded video released late on Monday.