Hong Kong Mulls Widening Vaccine Scheme

Carrie Lam got her second vaccine yesterday

 

As of today, 403,000 people have gotten the vaccine in Hong Kong, but that's just 5.4 percent of the population. At this rate it could take 300 days for before the city achieves herd immunity.

More people are choosing to get the BioNTech vaccine, but the problem now is that another shipment is coming soon and we still haven't used up the first one! There aren't enough storage facilities for BioNTech that needs to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius.

This is how pathetic Hong Kong's uptake of the vaccine is.

People are choosing BioNTech over Sinovac

A recent poll on Twitter asked what reasons people were hearing from others as to why they were not getting the jab. In the results on Saturday, 68.6 percent said the reason was "wait and see", 16.4 percent have no trust in the government, 13.2 percent don't trust the vaccines, and only 1.8 percent are anti vaxxers. 

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen says 25,000 people are getting vaccinated per day, but that could be increased to double that daily.

But where is he going to get double that number of people willing to get the jab?

He said the government is now looking into possibly further widening the vaccination scheme to people 16 years and older. Again this won't solve the capacity issue as the vast majority of takers are expats, who are not exactly a big chunk of the population.

Nip added the government is aiming to get the majority of the population vaccinated by the end of the year.

Nip says capacity can be doubled, but with who?

Well almost one quarter of the year has already gone, so we really need to step up the numbers of people getting the jab.

It doesn't help that the government postponed the Legislative Council elections because of the pandemic and now the electoral system is being overhauled, completely ignoring the will of the people; this mistrust in the government has spread to vaccines, as a kind of revenge in preventing Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor from achieving her goal of zero infections, and inoculating the vast majority of the population. 

The push back from the majority of the population is kind of like laam chau, or "if we burn, you burn with us". They are not anxious for the economy to get back on track as soon as possible, nor are they in a hurry to travel either, further frustrating the government's efforts to get Hong Kong back to some kind of normality.

The sports hall in Sai Ying Pun was empty at 6pm

Some have suggested people not be allowed to be given the promised HK$5,000 handout unless they get the jab, or offer some other enticing incentives. But shouldn't getting the vaccine be a civic duty, much like voting? It's the most effective way to protect each other in our bid to fight the pandemic.

But some feel the vaccines have come out too quickly and would rather way a few months to see what happens to the first batch of people before deciding if they will get the jab or not.

However, getting a vaccine is a no brainer -- one has to take it eventually so why not now?