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Opinion | Omicron’s emergence is the catalyst for Hong Kong to rethink its zero-Covid strategy
- Sealing off the city helped save lives early on and bought people time to get vaccinated, but it also made us complacent
- The arrival of the highly contagious Omicron variant means compulsory testing and quarantines are no longer practical, and it may well be time to break the seal
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As we enter our third year in the grim grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve tried to cheer myself up periodically by looking for positives in Hong Kong’s zero-Covid approach to the pandemic.
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And positives are not hard to find. The city has seen only 12,732 infections and 213 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. Singapore, a city state with less than 75 per cent of Hong Kong’s population, has seen over 283,000 infections and 835 deaths.
Unfortunately, on most days, the positives are crowded out by thoughts of how much long-term disruption the city’s zero-Covid policy has brought to our lives. Restaurants that close at 6pm are one thing, but the zero-Covid-driven quarantine regime for travellers is a much more serious matter. It has cut deep into the fabric of the city and our lives.
We’ve been all but hermetically sealed off from the world for the past two years in support of zero-Covid. Who wants to spend weeks in quarantine as the cost of a holiday, a family visit or a business trip?
And with few exceptions, non-resident visitors have been barred from the city. Recent attempts to align ourselves with the mainland’s similar policy seem to have stopped us from exploring alternate approaches to handling the pandemic.
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As the months and now years have passed, Hong Kong’s positioning as Asia’s world city is looking increasingly farcical. Perhaps “Hong Kong: Asia’s hermit city” might be a more authentic brand positioning.
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