Originally Posted by
Reply1984
I will say the third wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong exactly illustrates the necessity of strict border control. 100+ daily-new-cases has already made public hospital system overwhelmed. The elderly in the nursing home and their families were suffering. Also if you look at the second wave in Australia and New Zealand, it also caused by imported cases.
APAC countries are adopting strict border control methods. Problems of Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific are quite common. Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and even Japan......they are all waiting for vaccines.
I admire your optimism about vaccine. Let's hope you are right. But that's OT.
But even with vaccines, Sars-Covid-2 will be with us for the coming year and probably more.
Let's for the moment assume that the situation remains about the same in the next 12 months.
If HK, or another country, manages to get to zero cases, then obviously new cases will have to be imported.
But can HK sustain a country lockup for so long and without assurance that the 2022 will not be similar? We now see that covid has been around for almost a year and still dangerous. It cannot be eradicated worldwide, so we have to live with it.
You mention Vietnam. Vietnam has decided to protect its production/export sector. It sacrifices its tourism industry which contributes 6% to GDP. Factories are working with healthy workers.
We could take the example of other countries with somewhat-diverse economy which can sustain to be locked for a while.
But what is the production of Hong Kong? Besides shipping, it is mostly international services. The border lockdown to international pax is devastating. All the international trust and expertise that has been accumulated over many decades is waning.
You mention a peak at 100 daily cases for 7.5M people and current numbers are 10 or less . Europe is very open and has many more cases per inhabitant. Even at its low, UK had some 500-1,000 cases for 68M. They are now at 3,000 per day (divide by about 10 to get the HK equivalent). And UK remained fully open to anyone, with a somewhat-lax home quarantine only for pax from high-risk countries. France has many more cases.
I am not saying that covid is not serious. As a vulnerable person, I am very worried. I hate to see some family dying in elderly homes. But as a very small economic base whose "exports" are primarily international expertise, I don't see how HK can afford to remain locked after six months of that regime.
Singapore is in a somewhat similar situation and they are creating "green lanes" with many countries. Netherlands, which is like Hong Kong and Singapore an important outpost for multinationals, has decided to exempt foreign business visitors from quarantine (for their business activities). It is obvious that Hong Kong wishes to stem the flow from some Asian high-risk countries, even HK residents. But it needs to open travel corridors, bubbles (whatever the name) very fast with major developed countries even if they have more covid cases than HK. The purely-medical objective has to yield to a more balanced approach. It might make me feel a bit less safe in Hong Kong, but it is needed for HK survival and certainly that of CX. CX is near collapse. I don't mean today but in a year time. It does no have the government support that SQ or other Asian carriers have.
PS: In most countries, positive cases without serious symptoms are simply asked to isolate at home , as opposed to HK where positive people are hospitalized and overwhelming the public hospital system.