Herd Immunity Still not Enough, says Top Epidemiologist

The government needs to focus on vaccinating elderly people

It is utterly depressing to read one of Hong Kong's top epidemiologists on the pandemic says Hong Kong's Covid-19 situation will not become "normal" until at least mid-2022 despite vaccinations picking up the pace in the last few weeks.

Gabriel Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong's faculty of medicine, said even though there are projections of inoculating 70 percent of the population by October, more needed to be done to focus on helping the elderly get the jab.

Currently only 5 percent of the elderly who needed institutionalized care had been vaccinated so far.

Leung says new normal not until mid-2022

"We have to remember that half of the 200 Covid-19-related deaths in Hong Kong happened in elderly homes," Leung said, and that it was important to vaccinate vulnerable groups particularly from the Delta variant.

He explained that a carrier of the Delta variant could infect four to five people. An average person infected with the Alpha variant, in comparison, could infect just 2.5 people, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

For Leung, the test to decide when the city could return to normal was not to achieve high vaccination rates among the working population, but among vulnerable groups.

He accused the health authorities of pursuing the wrong vaccination strategy in care homes, and Leung believed the initial government guidelines on vaccination for elderly people with high blood pressure was "overcautious" and confusing.

Leung says jab strategy for elderly was confusing

As a result this caused many elderly people to avoid taking the jab out of concern for the potential side effects, when in fact, Leung said, they should be the first ones to be vaccinated because their underlying conditions would make a Covid-19 infection more deadly.

Currently 2 million people in Hong Kong are fully vaccinated, and 2.8 million with at least one dose. Only 3.9 million more to go...

Nevertheless the resumption of quarantine-free travel with the mainland remains out of reach.

Leung believed the mainland authorities were thinking "10 steps ahead" given the fast spread of new variants. He said the mainland government would only consider relaxing border controls after getting its own vulnerable groups fully vaccinated.

"Hong Kong is the southern gate of the country, and China's overriding strategy is still elimination of the virus," Leung said. "Before it can vaccinate enough of its population, it will not open its borders to us or anyone."

Depressing, right?