Though Omicron prompted sharp surges in instances throughout the globe, Hong Kong stands out grimly for its Covid-19 demise price. The town’s Covid demise toll is among the many highest recorded at anyone time through the pandemic. Emergency rooms are overflowing, hospitals are overwhelmed, and nursing properties are dealing with devastating outbreaks. As a physician who has labored in Hong Kong for greater than a decade, I discovered this devastating to witness. How did one of many world’s richest cities find yourself right here, greater than two years into the pandemic?
An important issue behind the grotesque demise toll is low vaccination uptake amongst Hong Kong’s aged inhabitants. Since early 2021, Hong Kong residents have been provided a alternative between two vaccines: an mRNA vaccine (Comirnaty, made by BioNTech and Fosun Pharma) and an inactivated vaccine (CoronaVac, made by the Chinese language firm Sinovac). Virtually instantly after the marketing campaign started, a gentle drumbeat of vaccine misinformation started on social media. A small variety of deaths that occurred inside 14 days of vaccine administration (dominated unrelated to vaccines by investigations) have been breathlessly brandished as proof that the brand new vaccines have been unsafe, particularly for aged folks with medical situations, who, mockingly, wanted them essentially the most.
Furthermore, as a result of there’s been a zero-Covid coverage, till this 12 months, there had been only a few instances in the neighborhood. This has probably contributed to additional vaccine hesitancy, as Covid-19 was merely not perceived as a reputable menace. The general public vaccination marketing campaign didn’t achieve correcting this distorted threat notion, and incentives for the vaccinated got here too late. A vaccine passport for eating places and indoor actions was rolled out solely in February 2022. Consequently, vaccine uptake for folks 70 and older at first of this 12 months was lower than 50 %. Most Hong Kongers didn’t contract this coronavirus beforehand, which means that vaccinations have been successfully the one technique to construct a wall of safety towards extreme Covid-19. All this made Hong Kong a ticking time bomb that’s now exploding in gradual movement.
The Hong Kong story isn’t about mRNA vaccines versus inactivated vaccines. Though three doses of the mRNA model are simpler towards Omicron, each varieties confer a point of safety towards extreme illness. Even when Hong Kong’s aged had all chosen the inactivated vaccine, the state of affairs wouldn’t be as dangerous as it’s now. The numbers communicate for themselves: About 90 % of the deceased in Hong Kong’s fifth wave had not obtained two doses of a vaccine. For an unvaccinated particular person above the age of 80, the case fatality price in Hong Kong is a whopping 12 %. This shrinks to three % for individuals who obtained two doses of any Covid-19 vaccine.
There have been different contributing components on this debacle. Hong Kong’s extremely inexpensive publicly sponsored well being care infrastructure has suffered continual shortages of area and staffing for a very long time, leaving hospitals susceptible when demand surged. Omicron brutally uncovered these cracks. A extra transmissible virus afflicting a massively undervaccinated older inhabitants led to crowds of sufferers thronging emergency rooms. Non permanent triage stations needed to be erected exterior hospitals, the place folks typically needed to wait lengthy intervals in chilly climate for admission to inpatient amenities, which in flip have been shortly overwhelmed. Many well being care staff have been required to isolate themselves as a result of they acquired contaminated, exacerbating the issue.