Read more about Bigger than Wuhan, Hong Kong outbreak defies China’s ‘Covid Zero’ playbook on Business Standard. Daily cases in the city have surged to more than 6,000 from a little over 100 in less than a month
is now dealing with a bigger Covid crisis than the outbreak in Wuhan that heralded the start of the pandemic, throwing into doubt whether China’s Covid Zero playbook of mass testing, isolation and quarantine can stamp it out. Daily cases in the city have surged to more than 6,000 from a little over 100 in less than a month, topping anything seen in China’s initial wave centered around Wuhan save for Feb.12,2020, when a backlog of reporting saw daily cases spike above 15,000. That, and subsequent outbreaks in China, were brought under control by lockdowns that Chief Executive Carrie Lam said are off the table. Instead, authorities are planning to test each of the city’s 7.5 million residents while turning hotels into isolation centers. However, the testing blitz won’t start until next month, raising concerns the virus will run rampant in the meantime, further straining an already overwhelmed health system. “Lining up and gathering for testing presents a huge infection risk,” said Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist at the University of “If the case load reaches tens of thousands as predicted, mass testing will only make things go from bad to worse.
