183,000 daily cases in matter of weeks if HK fails to get tough

Hong Kong could see a staggering 183,000 daily infections early next month when the fifth wave peaks because current curbs have not been as effective as expected, researchers at the University of Hong Kong medical school warn.

If the city does not implement measures like a citywide lockdown, over 625,000 people could be infected, and 1.9 million others who are close contacts would have to undergo quarantine.

"The daily number of infections, symptomatic cases and hospitalizations would peak at around 182,923, 70,798, and 2,893 in early to mid-March," said the researching team led by dean of HKU's faculty of medicine Gabriel Leung.

"The daily number of deaths would peak at nearly 100 by late March and the cumulative number of deaths by mid-May would be around 3,206."

They said the number of daily infections would drop to 400 in mid-May.

Researchers earlier said the social distancing measures could curb the virus spread by 77 percent and there would be 28,000 daily cases during the peak in mid to late March.

However, they updated their pandemic modeling and revised their estimate of the effectiveness of curbs downward to only 71 percent.

"Incident case numbers and death counts since February 10 suggest that [the earlier] assumption overestimates the effectiveness of measures," the researchers said.

"In the absence of much more intensive public health and social measures - akin to a lockdown -the trajectory of the fifth wave is unlikely to change substantially from its current course."

Respiratory specialist Leung Chi-chiu told The Standard that the pandemic situation could be affected by many factors, including the changes in measures, and the HKU's modeling faces many uncertainties.

Leung, who is not involved in the research, said people do not have to be too concerned about the predicted numbers as stricter measures may control the pandemic.

But he said it is still possible that Hong Kong may see daily infections of more than 100,000 cases.

"If there are more than 100,000 daily infections, I think the HKU's estimated death count is too optimistic," Leung said. "The number of Covid deaths could be far more than what HKU is expecting if the pandemic situation is out of control."

He said the vaccination rate among the elderly remains low, adding this could lead to large-scale outbreaks at care-homes as only around 22 percent of their residents have received the jab.

Public hospitals also face the risk of large-scale outbreaks as Covid patients and patients with other illnesses are waiting to get admitted, causing the risk of cross-infection, Leung said.

He said it would be useless for the government to launch a citywide mandatory test if the daily infection reaches more than 100,000 cases.

"The transmission chains can only be curbed by sending all Covid patients to isolation facilities," Leung said.

"The government may not be able to find enough isolation facilities when there are too many cases. They cannot stop the transmission only by detecting the cases and all their efforts spent in the citywide testing will be wasted."

wallis.wang@singtaonewscorp.com