Donald Low

Opinion | Omicron shows Hong Kong can’t maintain ‘dynamic zero-Covid’. It’s time to learn to live with Covid-19 and open up to the world

Strict virus curbs make little economic sense if the mainland border shows no signs of reopening and the city’s current outbreak spirals further out of control

Authorities should emphasise that not being vaccinated – as many of the city’s elderly residents continue to be – is unacceptable, antisocial behaviour

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Police and health workers wearing personal protective equipment are seen at a residential tower in Hong Kong under coronavirus lockdown last summer. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Donald Low

Published: 8:00am, 7 Feb 2022

It’s become quite apparent in recent days that Hong Kong’s current social distancing measures are inadequate to suppress the city’s fifth wave of Covid-19. While similar measures were, eventually, effective in ending the fourth wave last spring, the Omicron variant is much more transmissible and cannot be contained as easily.

A persistent failure to suppress the current outbreak could leave Hong Kong facing more stringent measures with no end in sight, even as the authorities refuse to contemplate a more sustainable, business-friendly mitigation approach.

It is time for the Hong Kong government to accept the possibility that even if zero-Covid is a desirable goal, it is not realistic or achievable. Alternative strategies for dealing with the virus must now be considered.

Hong Kong government workers wearing protective suits deliver supplies to residents of a housing estate in Kwai Chung last month. Lockdowns and mass compulsory testing have proved costly and impractical. Photo: Jelly Tse

The government argues that it has to persist with “dynamic zero-Covid” – accepting that infections will happen but then moving quickly to stamp them out – because most of the city’s elderly residents are unvaccinated and therefore vulnerable. Just half of those in their 70s and only one-fifth of residents in their 80s have been double jabbed so far.

Under the current strategy, social distancing measures can only be relaxed once vaccination rates among the elderly are sufficiently high – say 80 per cent. But this line of reasoning, and the case for dynamic zero-Covid, is flawed on at least four levels.

Costly, impractical

First, dynamic zero-Covid necessitates lockdowns and compulsory testing of the entire population over a short period of time to bring infections down quickly. Doing so is costly and impractical – as places that abandoned zero-Covid, such as Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, have already found – and requires tools and a level of administrative capacity that Hong Kong probably does not have.

Second, and somewhat paradoxically, higher vaccination rates may actually make zero-Covid harder, not easier, to achieve. A recent paper in the European Journal of Epidemiology looking at infection rates in 68 countries found no discernible relationship between vaccination rates and infection rates. In fact, some places with the highest proportion of vaccinated people also had the highest Covid-19 caseloads. Israel, for example, saw infections soar soon after achieving a vaccination rate of more than 80 per cent.