Hong Kong needs its own Anthony Fauci to beat politics-driven fear of vaccines

Having the chief executive as the leading voice on pandemic control has risked needlessly politicising a community health issue

The city needs a respected, apolitical voice who can deliver the facts without having science rubbished by those distrustful of the government and its motives

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Vijay Verghese

Vijay Verghese is a Hong Kong-based journalist and editor of the online magazines AsianConversations.

Published: 6:45am, 15 Feb 2022

With Hong Kong aflutter in the Omicron crosshairs and pressure from the mainland to emulate its “dynamic zero-Covid” approach, the city is split once again along well-entrenched fault lines.

Pundits argue that staying in lockstep with Beijing is necessary to reopen the border for quarantine-free travel and economic exchange. Not everyone agrees, but with medical frontiers heading into uncharted Covid-19 territory, they could be right.

Maria van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19 response, recently said Omicron would not be the final variant “because this virus is circulating at a very intense level around the world”.

This should give anyone pause as Omicron continues its rampage through a global laboratory of the unvaccinated and susceptible. As China revels in the spotlight of a bubble-wrapped Winter Olympics, it has firmed its resolve to stamp out Covid-19 and prove the sagacity of its unique course.