Advertisement
Opinion | Coronavirus outbreak: Hong Kong is facing a shortage of masks, toilet paper and leadership
- Hongkongers are scrambling to buy supplies while the Hong Kong government scrambles to respond to the public health crisis. A crisis is a real test of leadership – and the Carrie Lam administration seems to be failing
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Which came first: the inept administration of Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor or the crippling anti-government protests?
Advertisement
This chicken-or-egg question is important as a novel strain of pandemonium erupts in Hong Kong. This is not the old strain, when our streets were turned into battlefields of lawless fury. This is the mutated version: a contagion of fear has gripped our city, and the uninfected masses put themselves at risk of contracting the new coronavirus by flocking to buy not just masks and rice, but also toilet paper.
This is an outrageous spectacle – almost as outrageous as the chief executive restricting the use of masks among government officials in non-frontline positions, so as to conserve the supply of masks for public health workers. Then there is the mystery of the missing masks: Lam earmarked masks produced by inmates in Lo Wu Correctional Institution for medical staff, and yet the Hospital Authority denied receiving those masks.
Unfortunately, this is the government Hong Kong has to live with these days.
Advertisement
On January 30, the city’s No 2, Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, said more than 32 million masks would be made available to the public and he was “sure that in the next few days more masks will be available on the market”. Well, more than 10 days have since come and gone. So much for Cheung’s certainty.
The chief executive eventually made a U-turn (or a clarification, or something) on the restriction of mask use among civil servants, but only after adding to the panic. Think about it: if there aren’t enough masks to go around among government officials, naturally people will have to hunt for their own.
Advertisement