Stormy Days Ahead in Third Coronavirus Wave

The gloomy weather on Sunday reflected people's mood

Today Hong Kong reported another 80 coronavirus cases for a total of 3,669,  though the death toll went up by four to 42.

The focus is now on two wet markets, Hung Hom and Tokwawan where there were two more infections at the former, one at the latter. Both markets were closed earlier to have a thorough disinfection.

Social-distancing measures are set to continue for at least another week, with the dining-in ban from 6pm to 5am. Numerous restaurants in Hong Kong may not survive after this third wave, as it is difficult for them to pivot to doing more takeaway, which does not earn them as much as patrons dining in.

Yuen Kwok-yung inspects Hung Hom wet market

If more of them close, then more people are going to be out of work. I bumped into a young Singaporean chef on Sunday while walking along the waterfront. Since the new dining-in restrictions have been in place, business has dropped significantly at the food court in Central where he serves Singaporean dishes like laksa and nasi lemak.

The food court, which opened two months ago, mostly services office workers in the building upstairs, but most of them are now working from home. Also that food court has no agreement with any delivery services, which means he's had to set up an alternate location for food delivery pick-up.

This is his first business venture and while it's temporary, it's still not a good sign when you've been doing everything you can to keep the business afloat, but there are so many factors beyond your control. He knows cutting staff would help financially, but he feels this would be awful to do to people and is trying to figure out other ways to keep everyone employed.

Another young businessman runs a space for guest chef pop-ups, but that's been obliterated since the pandemic in late January. He quickly pivoted to doing special dinners cooked by local chefs, offering cooking classes and bake sales, and for two months managed to pay the rent this way.

Been supportive buying these desserts!

But now with no dinner service, he can only depend on doing home catering for clients, and while it's decent money, it's a lot of physical labour, carrying all the ingredients, plates and pots, pans, and cutlery to the customer's home.

This was probably not what the father of a young child had in mind when he started this business over five years ago, but now he is hustling any way he can to keep going. He's had to dig into his savings to pay this past month's rent.

It's difficult to watch these guys work so hard and yet they can't seem to get a break...