Tough border crackdown overdue

The local stock market is in for an ominous start to the Year of the Rat when trading reopens today after the most grueling Lunar New Year holiday in recent memory.

Many people were forced to cancel holiday plans and stay at home as the coronavirus epidemic that has so far claimed more than 100 lives and sickened thousands in the mainland spread to Hong Kong and various countries.

Yesterday's announcement by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to virtually close the land border to mainlanders - including the drastic move to shut down West Kowloon express rail terminus - was overdue in view of warnings from leading top scientists.

All the information available as of yesterday showed that Hubei province and its capital city Wuhan have been radiating the disease to the rest of the nation [with the exception of Tibet] and to various parts of the world.

A medical team at University of Hong Kong has even projected that the infected population may double every six days and not peak until April or May.

That's a starkly alarming prediction. Given the SAR's connection to the mainland by land, sea and air, Hong Kong is undoubtedly the most vulnerable to the threat.

Calls to close the border were raised but rejected a number of times. Yesterday's U-turn showed the extreme step has now been agreed by the top leadership in Beijing.

It came as no surprise when, at their meeting with the chief executive yesterday, a group of pro-Beijing political figures joined the "unpatriotic" calls to close the border that were first proposed by their pan-democratic opponents.

Infectious disease experts have advised that it will require a two-pronged approach to tackle this crisis, which is our most severe public health threat since the SARS epidemic. These are: curbing at the source; and preventing cases from forming a cycle locally.

Lam's announcement to close the express rail terminus, for example, was clearly an attempt to curb the source at the border. However, it remains baffling to me why the closure only takes effect from midnight Thursday and not immediately after yesterday's announcement or even today.

If something has to be enforced, then surely it must be done sooner rather than later. Why the delay?

The growing sense of anxiety is evident and it is common to see big queues outside pharmacies desperate to snap up face masks at often-inflated prices.

For instance in North Point, dozens of people waited outside a shop only to be told that they had to place orders for masks.

It strikes me as absurd that masks have now become a scarce commodity. Should merchants be allowed to capitalize on a public health crisis this way?

And should Lam declare face masks a strategic commodity if the situation does not improve?