Hong Kong’s fifth wave "a predictable tragedy”: HKU expert

Hong Kong’s current crisis and high death rate for Covid-19 outbreak is a “predictable tragedy”, clinical assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Microbiology Siddharth Sridhar said. 

Sridhar stressed that the low vaccination rate among the elderly was the primary factor setting Hong Kong apart from other regions that have seen Omicron outbreaks.

“Getting vaccinated dramatically reduces your risk of dying of Covid-19.” Sridhar wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday, emphasizing that universal scientific consensus has been established for over a year.

“Unfortunately, many elderly in Hong Kong discovered this the hard way,” he added. As of Monday, only 54.6 percent of Hong Kong’s elderly above 80 years of age have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

At 12.15 percent, the death rate of partially vaccinated and unvaccinated people above 80 years of age is over four times the death rate of their fully vaccinated counterparts in the same age group.

According to the Department of Health’s Centre for Health Protection, approximately 90 percent of Hong Kong’s fifth wave deceased had not received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Citing local authorities, Sridhar said that both vaccines available to Hongkongers, produced by BioNTech and Sinovac, are both safe options, even for those with chronic medical conditions. However, studies have shown that three doses of BioNTech is the most effective option against Omicron.

Sridhar said that Omicron was also one of the primary reasons for the surging caseloads, highlighting how scarce living space and congested housing played a key role in exacerbating the spread of the highly transmissible Covid-19 variant “like wildfire”.

This is especially true for residential care homes for the elderly, which are especially vulnerable to Covid outbreaks as they concentrate vulnerable individuals more likely to be immunocompromised in confined indoor spaces.

Sridhar also said that urgently launching policies that would have alleviated the pressure on Hong Kong’s overloaded public healthcare system was more important than “boilerplate about saluting healthcare workers”.