Hong Kong has no grounds to adopt 'live with Covid' strategy: experts

Hong Kong has no grounds to adopt the “live with Covid” strategy because the highly infectious Omicron variant is still harmful to elderly people and chronic disease patients, even though it is generally weaker than previous variants, experts said.

Jasper Chan Fuk-woo from the University of Hong Kong’s department of microbiology said the ratio of high risk groups developing complications and dying from Omicron infections is still higher than that of common cold.

This came after Chan and other HKU researchers led by top microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung on Sunday announced findings showing the Omicron variant is less effective in replicating cells and causing diseases than other Covid variants.

Speaking in a radio program on Monday, Chan said there were overseas suggestions that given Omicron is weaker, countries can adopt the “living with the virus” approach because the variant is too infectious to contain.

“But the strategy comes with a condition. A number of chronically-ill and elderly people will still be infected, causing them to develop serious sickness or even death… (The strategy can't be adopted) unless the society accepts this condition.” he said.

“Apart from that we also need to evaluate whether our medical system can afford catering to more infected people, as well as border reopening with the mainland and overseas countries.”

“At this point we should still try to contain the virus to protect the public health and medical system,” he said. Respiratory specialist Leung Chi-chiu said foreign countries adopting the “live with the virus” approach have seen hundreds of thousands Covid deaths and continuous economic loss in exchange for herd immunity from natural infections.

“The vaccines we have now cannot effectively stop Omicron from spreading, so don’t fantasize about living with the virus,” he said.

“Look at Australia, which is recording over 100,000 Omicron cases per day. We should take that as a warning.”

He called for citizens to stay home in the coming week, adding that they should reduce going out and cut contact with other people by 30 percent, in order to lower Omicron’s transmissibility by 90 percent.

Another HKU expert Ivan Hung Fan-ngai believed outbreaks in the northern hemisphere will drop significantly in April, as many overseas countries are seeing many new cases daily while people are taking third jabs for extra protection.

“If there is no new variants emerging after spring, the pandemic may die down for several months but it will return in winter, like seasonal influenza,” he said.

“I believe in the future, all countries will be facing the threats of influenza and Covid every winter, and people will have to get jabs for both infections every year.”

Government advisor David Hui Shu-cheong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong said he understand citizens’ anti-epidemic fatigue after two years of battling against Covid.

In an interview with an online media, Hui said citizens have misunderstood he and the other two government experts Yuen and HKU dean of faculty of medicine dean Gabriel Leung decide each and every part of the city’s anti-epidemic policies.

But he said he understood citizens could be unhappy with the government and experts for Covid have been affecting Hong Kong for two years.

Separately, lawmakers Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, Doreen Kong Yuk-foon and Nelson Lam Chi-yuen on Sunday sent a letter to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and suggested SAR authorities to set up an anti-epidemic panel with mainland.

Read more: ‘Unsustainable' zero Covid policy to be blamed for hamsters' culling: HKU professor