Hong Kong is now dealing with a bigger Covid crisis than the outbreak in Wuhan that heralded the start of the pandemic, throwing into doubt whether China’s Covid Zero playbook of mass testing, isolation and quarantine can stamp it out. Daily cases in the city have surged to more than 6,000 from a little over 100 in less than a month, topping anything seen in China’s initial wave centered around
Instead, authorities are planning to test each of the city’s 7.5 million residents while turning hotels into isolation centers. However, the testing blitz won’t start until next month, raising concerns the virus will run rampant in the meantime, further straining an already overwhelmed health system. “Lining up and gathering for testing presents a huge infection risk,” said Jin Dong-Yan, a virolo
The thousands of daily infections means the opportunity to deploy mainland China’s strategy of mass testing to disrupt transmission has already been lost, Jin said. “In China they are only able to do this because infections are so low so they can shoot mosquitoes with cannon balls.” he said, referring to the outsized response mainland authorities mount at the detection of just a handful of cases.
Hong Kong is struggling to increase its testing capacity from the current level of just 20,000 a day. Hospitals have also filled up due to the rigid policy of admitting all confirmed infections, even if people are symptom-free. The Hong Kong government is also scrambling to convert hotel rooms into isolation centers while waiting for the mainland to help build a giant isolation facility.