COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong
At least five lawmakers attended a parliamentary session on 19 January, three days before their quarantine was to end; two of them claimed to have obtained medical advice prior to attending the session. On 18 January, authorities announced that traces of the virus were detected on 11 hamsters out of 178 hamsters, rabbits and chinchillas tested at the Little Boss pet shop and associated warehouse in Causeway Bay while investigating the city’s first untraceable Delta variant diagnosis in more than three months, How early can I sell this Precon condo? (look what i found) in a 23-year-old store employee. Tsui resigned from his post on 31 January.
Similar complacency has occurred in Taiwan, Macau, HOA doesn’t allow me to rent out my condo – Sell or Keep it? (CA) and mainland China. Some older residents believe the BioNTech vaccine leads to severe side effects. Many Hongkongers felt that the government is actively pushing the SinoVac vaccine despite its lower efficacy compared to BioNTech and AstraZeneca. Skepticism of Western and preventive medicine further contributed to the hesitancy. Officials have also said that people with “uncontrolled severe chronic diseases” should not receive SinoVac and urged those who weren’t sure to consult their doctors first. Conspiracy theories about the government have spread as well due to a packaging issue experienced with the BioNTech vaccine.
On 28 July, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan admitted that there was “empirical evidence” that quarantine exemption policies for over 30 groups of inbound travellers – including cross-boundary goods vehicle drivers, aircraft crew members, government officials on duty, and numerous company executives – had contributed to the recent increase in coronavirus cases. Experts had been pointing to such loopholes as a likely cause already a week earlier, mentioning in addition returning domestic workers. Social-distancing rules were further toughened by limiting public gatherings to two people; banning eating-in at restaurants; and making the wearing of face masks compulsory in all public places. The 118 new cases announced that day heralded the eighth consecutive day of three-digit infections per day.
In the view of the third wave, the Education Bureau suspended schools again from the start of the new academic year in August (2020-2021), until mid-late September. All students were allowed back in school everyday for half days after 29 September. In the view of the fourth wave, with 115 new cases reported on 29 November 2020, schools were declared immediate suspension again starting from Wednesday 2 December, until after the Lunar New Year holidays in 2021, but allowing at most one sixth of the school to have half-day face-to-face lessons after Christmas.
A domestic helper from the Philippines caught the mutated strain of the coronavirus, N501Y, via an unknown local source. The travel bubble, which was initially slated to begin in November last year was called off after a rise in cases in Hong Kong. The government declared mandatory testing and vaccination for foreign domestic helpers, principally from the Philippines and Indonesia, after cases were discovered, but reversed the decision in May following criiticisms from labour organisations of discrimination.
