How Hong Kong Went from "Zero-Covid" to World's Highest Death Rate
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- The omicron coronavirus variant is tearing through the densely populated region of Hong Kong, infecting more than 700,000 people since the outbreak began barely three months ago, according to official data
- However, researchers at the University of Hong Kong say no less than 1.8 million people have been infected since the outbreak began in late December, and by the end of April, the number would have risen to 4.3 million
- This surge comes as a shock to the Chinese territory that has implemented a "zero-covid" strategy, which involved mass testing, contact tracing, and strict quarantine measures that had kept cases and deaths to a mimumum for the last two years
- Critics noted that these measures made officials complacent and only delayed the outbreak. The strategy had depended on cutting off transmission chains as soon as an infection was detected, by isolating cases and their close contacts for up to three weeks; but as soon as omicron began to spread, cases rose faster than officials could contain
- “The government and the Hospital Authority weren’t prepared for the outbreak,” said Adrian Kwan, an internist at a public hospital. “They had no contingency plan until late February. They did not anticipate what they would do when there was an outbreak in institutional settings, elderly homes in this case
