In response to the emergence of a variant in the United Kingdom, there are also cases of disease after a 14-day incubation period, the Hong Kong government amended the regulations to empower the Secretary for Food and health in the coming year, depending on the situation, to extend the quarantine period from 14 days to no more than 28 days. In addition, the Hong Kong government also amended the legislation to authorize the Secretary for Food and Health to approve the emergency use of Wulnavirus vaccine, and set up a protection fund in order to financially support the livelihood of people affected by serious side effects after vaccination. However, whether the arrangement is supported depends on whether Hong Kong people are willing to vaccinate, and after the last voluntary universal testing response is not as satisfactory, Chief Executive Carrie Lam refused to set a target for the number of vaccinations, only stressed that enough vaccines have been ordered for the public to be vaccinated.
After repeated tests, the Centre for Health Protection confirmed yesterday (23) afternoon that the two confirmed students returning to Hong Kong from the United Kingdom had a virus genetic sequencing compatible with the British variant of the virus, which is the first time that Hong Kong has found such a variant of the virus that is 70% more infectious than the general martial lung virus. The patients returned to Hong Kong by plane on the 7th and 13th of this month, and the three students who returned to Hong Kong with them will be tested again for the virus.
In addition, Mrs. Lam led a group of senior officials to hold a press conference yesterday evening, announced that it has successfully negotiated the purchase of 7.5 million doses of vaccines from the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, together with the agreement reached earlier on the inactivated vaccine from China Kexing and the mRNA vaccine from China Fosun in cooperation with the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, that is, 22.5 million doses of vaccines have been ordered for the public to be vaccinated in phases. She revealed that a fourth vaccine will be identified as soon as possible, with the same quantity of 7.5 million doses, hoping to provide enough for twice the population of Hong Kong. Priority vaccination will be given to elderly people aged 60 and above, patients with long-term illnesses, health care workers, employees of residential care homes for the elderly and disabled, and the median number may reach 2 to 3 million people.
However, the priority vaccination date may need to be delayed, because the original hope that the first to arrive in Hong Kong next month, the Chinese Kexing vaccine, its phase III clinical trial data in Brazil need to postpone the release of 15 days, one of the Hong Kong government’s anti-epidemic experts, Professor Xu Shuchang pointed out in a radio program this morning, Kexing vaccine may not be as scheduled next month for Hong Kong, it is estimated that the fastest will not arrive in Hong Kong until February next year, the original date scheduled to start vaccination in February and March will also be delayed.
He continued that the vaccine developed by Fosun in cooperation with the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, now seems to have a better chance of arriving in Hong Kong at the earliest.
For some experts say that a country or region must have 70% of its population vaccinated in order to effectively control the martial pneumonia epidemic, will the Hong Kong government take this as a target? Carrie Lam refused to set a target for the number of people to be vaccinated, and Xu Shuchang only said that if only a few people are vaccinated, the community will still be infected from time to time, there may be regional outbreaks, which is not much help to the community prevention and control, calling on the public to try to vaccinate.
However, there are still many comments on the Internet questioning the credibility of the Chinese-made vaccine, some members of the medical and nursing professions have even indicated that they will not be vaccinated, even the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong, Mr. Gabriel Leung, also said yesterday that it is not necessary to force medical and nursing vaccination, but he gave the reason that vaccination may not necessarily protect against infection, for example, the protection rate of some doses of AstraZeneca vaccine reaches 90%, but only to protect against disease, the proportion of vaccination without infection is only 57%.
The Hong Kong government launched a voluntary universal community testing program in September with the support of the central government in Beijing, several extensions of the testing date to 14 days later, nearly 1.8 million people completed the test, and Xu Shucheng expects 5 million to 6 million people to participate in the expectations of a far cry, he said before the program, if only a million people participate, the role is not much. There are comments that this is the public dissatisfaction with the Hong Kong government’s disguised referendum.
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