Panic Buying Settles In

Carrie Lam was berated yesterday for not wearing her mask properly

Hongkongers are pretty much united now in their ire at the Hong Kong government for not ensuring enough supplies for masks and sanitizing products in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus that's spreading around the world.

There are now over 6,100 confirmed cases, 6,000 of which are in China, where 132 people have died. Hong Kong has eight confirmed cases, and three new ones today that need additional testing. Two of the cases are a couple in their early 70s who apparently spent a couple of days in the Four Seasons Hong Kong!

This morning a long line at the a pharmacy in Kennedy Town

It's a massive step up from 17 years ago when the Chinese doctor who began the spreading of SARS here stayed at the Metropark Hotel Kowloon...

In any event, this morning on my way to work I saw a long line in front of the neighbourhood pharmacy, as people were waiting for it to open to buy masks. Wonder if they managed to get any. Some shops gouged customers, raising prices several times the regular price, or they still didn't have any new stock.

Not only were masks and hand sanitizers in high demand, but people also raided supermarkets for fear of being stuck at home and not having enough to eat. At Heng Fa Chuen,  the ParknShop there ran out of vegetables at 2pm, while the shelves of sacks of rice in Yuen Long were completely empty.

In the ParknShop in Kennedy Town, loaves of bread were gone, and strangely enough flu medicine was not to be found.

"I am not that worried," said Cheng, a businessman in his 50s, who was buying canned food in Heng Fa Chuen. "But I can understand why many are panicking and stocking up on food. Their actions show they have lost confident in the government. As the government is not helping us, we have to do what we can to feel assured."

Many supermarkets ran out of food, especially vegetables

Cheng hit the nail on the head.

People feel desperate when the Hong Kong government claimed it had enough stock for masks and yet they cannot find any, and unlike Macau where the authorities there demanded that shops selling masks can only sell them at a low price and allotted a certain number of boxes per person, no such system is in place in Hong Kong.

University of Hong Kong microbiologist Dr Ho Pak-leung has estimated the city would use about 300 million surgical masks per month during the outbreak of the coronavirus.

"For a person who needs to go outside... they will use up to three disposable masks," Ho said. "If 1 million belong to this category, that's 3 million masks per day, 90 million per month. He also said health care workers in public hospitals used as many as 300,000 masks daily at the peak of the 2003 SARS epidemic.

At just before 8pm, Central MTR station was eerily quiet

So far the coronavirus doesn't seem as deadly as SARS, but seems more contagious than SARS, as people don't have any symptoms when they are infected with the coronavirus. 

Nevertheless, Lam and her administration must be accountable to the people in fulfilling her promise that there are enough masks for the city... or did she just mean for herself?