COVID-19 quarantines, testing, contact tracing, and compulsory mask-wearing may become near-permanent given the lack of any visible exit plan.
The vocabulary of the pandemic seems to have virtually disappeared when talking to anyone outside Hong Kong. They often seem surprised to hear talk of quarantines, restrictions, testing and tracing. A few might even venture it all sounds very 2020.
After travel restrictions were eased in August, the city seemed to see a small trickle of permanent residents needing to make the trek once every three years to keep their status.
But they themselves seemed to be caught off-guard and confused by the necessity of URL-ing the city’s contact tracing app twice to get in anywhere, and then having the same trouble everyone else has jostling their phone screen around for the second scan.
High Infections
That being said, the current level of COVID-19 infections has risen to high levels again, as the «South China Morning Post» (paywall) reports daily. But unlike earlier waves, the medical experts told the English-speaking newspaper they did not expect a return to the heightened level of restrictions seen earlier this year during the city’s «fifth wave», a term now often said with some trepidation, almost as if saying it might bring it back.
But, unfortunately for Hong Kong, sitting squat in the middle of just so much geopolitics, inter-government lecturing, finger-pointing, and jostling for position - this all might become a form of semi-permanent stasis.
As an example. The government on Tuesday indicated, as the «SCMP» reported, that it had made no decision on whether to scrap quarantine restrictions entirely by November when the HKMA intends to hold a banking summit and an international seven-a-side rugby tournament.
Doing Little
Just a few days earlier, another expert told the newspaper indicated the possibility of a change from a 3+4 quarantine to a 0+7 by November, meaning that residents can spend it all at home. How this benefits international bankers from abroad who still must spend seven days at a hotel doing near to nothing is anyone’s guess.
But it is an SCMP article Sunday citing the city’s health minister, Lo Chung-mau, that may be a better indication of what is to come. With a palpable sense of anger, he appeared to take down the Bloomberg news agency for using sources in its recent reports of disagreement inside the city’s government over quarantine restrictions last.
Casting an extremely wide net, he apparently took the opportunity to remind observers that China’s zero-covid strategy has done a far more effective job than anywhere else in the world in preventing deaths from the pandemic, comparing the mainland’s numbers to those of the US and UK.
China Lockdowns
It all just means that Hong Kong is caught right in the middle again. China itself continues to place lockdown dozens of cities, and a substantial proportion of its population, ahead of the 20th Party Congress when Xi Jinping is expected to be elected as the country’s leader for a third term.
Originally, many observers indicated that the end of the congress would be a point where the restrictions would be relaxed, as CNN indicated, but those voices are now getting increasingly quieter.
The same was said ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February and things have only gotten stricter since then.
The problem with being caught in the middle is that you are not likely to go in one direction or the other. It likely means that masks, testing, contact tracing and quarantines are likely to be with us for the foreseeable future given there is simply no other plan out there right now.
