Two more jab centers to open in Sai Ying Pun and Prince Edward

Two more community vaccination centers - Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Centre in Sai Ying Pun and Boundary Street Sports Centre in Prince Edward - will be put into service starting from next Wednesday.  

Citizens can make reservations to receive free BioNTech jabs from Thursday. Eligible elderly aged 60 or above can get same-day tickets with their Hong Kong identity card every day from 7.45 am.  

The government has increased the number of booths and workforce at vaccination venues and the number of vaccination centers to 14 to enable members of the public to receive vaccination, Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen said on his social media.  

"The current vaccination capacity has increased by 77 percent from the beginning of the month, reaching 1.77 million doses a month or nearly 60,000 doses a day."  

He called on unvaccinated citizens, especially the elderly, to get jabbed as soon as possible for self-protection.  

During the Lunar New Year, all vaccination centers will be closed from January 31 to February 2. The two located at private hospitals will remain closed on February 3.  

Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said the government immediately tightened the prevention measures since the fifth outbreak and stepped up tracking and detection work to try to cut off the transmission channel in the shortest possible time.  

She said the LeaveHomeSafe app has so far sent out infection risk notifications to 9,500 premises. An average of 10,000 people received the notification from the app and went testing every day in the past week.  

She also said the government has increased the testing capacities in the community and received a record high of 144,000 samples last Thursday.  

In addition, Chan said the government will continue to raise the vaccination rate to create favorable conditions for quarantine-free travel with the mainland.  

She said 76 percent of citizens have received the first dose of vaccine and that the number of doses received this month has reached 1.3 million, a surge of 30 percent over last month.