Hong Kong may shift Covid’s status from ‘pandemic’ to ‘endemic’: What it means
The Hong Kong government is in talks with top pandemic advisers to declare Covid-19 an ‘endemic’ disease, leading to ease absolute Covid curbs including isolation norms for infected patients.
Hong Kong in lockstep with China, shared a similar plan a day after Macau announced the virus as endemic and relaxed most of the Covid norms.
Apart from the Special Administrative Regions (SAR), China also downgraded the status of Covid to endemic on Sunday.
John Lee Ka-Chiu, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, said the government would monitor the situation closely before coming to any conclusion, South China Post reported.
“We will make our decision based on the data and the actual situation of Hong Kong. I remind people here that the World Health Organization has not changed its classification of Covid-19. So, we will also be watching for the possibility of variants developing.” he said.
“But so far the statistics and the data indicated that these factors are well under control,” he added.
Professor Ivan Hung Fan-Ngai, Hong Kong’s pandemic adviser, supported China’s decision to declare Covid an endemic claiming that the residents have developed robust hybrid immunity, South China Post reported.
Hung said, “93% of the city’s eligible population had taken two doses of a Covid vaccine and 83% had been triple jabbed. Declaring the virus endemic would mean that Covid would be treated as any other upper respiratory virus”.
Experts raised the country’s preparedness to treat the infection as endemic a few months ago. Pandemic adviser Professor Yuen Kwok-Yung in September 2021 published an article indicating virus’s deep-rooted presence in the country.
However, Yuen urged the use of masks to stop the spread of the infection, especially during the winters.
As per the report by South China Post, there are varied views amongst the pandemic advisors. Professor Lau Yu-lung thinks that isolation should continue for a while as the country has opened its borders.