HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong residents are becoming increasingly annoyed with the administration’s insistence on sticking to China’s “zero-COVID” strategy as the city po…
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong residents are becoming increasingly annoyed with the administration’s insistence on sticking to China’s “zero-COVID” strategy as the city posted another record number of cases Wednesday, bristling at ever-stricter regulations and a plan to test everyone for the virus. Schools have already switched to online learning and summer holidays are being moved forward so that the buildings can be used as facilities for testing, isolation and vaccination. Hong Kong says it will go ahead with the plan to test every one of its 7.5 million residents three times in March. Under the “zero-COVID-19″ strategy, every person testing positive case must be quarantined in a hospital or other government facility for 14 days regardless of symptoms. It’s in contrast with most countries, which are reducing restrictions and allowing people with mild or no symptoms to remain at home. “The whole world knows we have to live with the virus, only the Hong Kong government does not know,” said taxi driver Chan Tai-man. “Actually it’s not that they don’t know, they only do what the Chinese government tells them to.” With hospitals in Hong Kong already overwhelmed, construction crews from mainland China are being sent to build new isolation units and the city was moving to convert hotels, halls, indoor stadiums and other quarantine locations, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said. Chinese medical teams were also building mobile testing laboratories to help prepare Hong Kong for the launch of the mass testing. “Everybody is now predicting that we will have a pretty sizeable percentage of people infected with COVID-19 in Hong Kong, so hopefully through comprehensive universal testing we will try to identify these infected cases and put them in isolation,” Lam told reporters Tuesday night. “To ensure the success, we need a lot more isolation facilities.” Leung Chun-kit, a kitchen worker, said he didn’t think the government was prepared for universal testing and dealing with the results.
