HK to Push Up Elderly Vaccination Rate

Fewer than 30 percent of seniors over 70 have their first jab

 

Looks like Hong Kong might really be getting serious about pushing up vaccination rates now as there are plans for government workers to go door-to-door to visit the elderly and persuade them to get the jab. 

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen, who is overseeing the vaccination drive, stressed the city was behind its target of inoculating at least 70 percent of the eligible population. Fewer than 30 percent of residents over 70 years old had gotten their first dose, and the rate was substantially lower for those over 80, he noted. 

"Elderly people in the city are the group least interested in vaccination. We have to be more proactive, and make getting into the community to reach senior people our coming strategy," he told a radio program.

Nip says workers will visit elderly door-to-door

However, one should keep in mind that many university students like the ones at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Clear Water Bay must be fully vaccinated to even be allowed on campus, teachers must be jabbed, and many companies have pushed hard for their staff to get vaccinated, particularly those in the hospitality industry.

At the start of the vaccination program, when seniors were invited to get inoculated first, there were reports of those who had serious side effects, and some died -- that were not at all related to the vaccine -- which scared off many elderly residents.

To that end Nip says talks will be organized as some housing estates and malls, with free consultations and immediate vaccination on site.

"We will also do more talks at care homes for the elderly, as most of them did not get vaccinated there due to family members' worries," he added.

Doctors will be on hand to give consultations

Going door-to-door is a very strong step up from trying to persuade people to get jabbed in press conferences. Depending on how they approach the seniors, government workers may get doors slammed in their faces or adamant refusals to get vaccinated.

Maybe they should have teamed up with the Census and Statistics Department a few months ago to not only count the number of residents in Hong Kong but also check to see if they have been inoculated.

Implementing this strategy now shows the government was not that serious about pushing for vaccinations, and seems to use this as an excuse to continue the restrictive social-distancing measures, particularly gatherings at a maximum of four people outside.

Meanwhile the Standard Chartered Marathon 2021 really is happening on October 24 when a total of 18,500 runners (all fully vaccinated) will take part in the 10K, half marathon and full marathon... 

The Standard Chartered Marathon is going ahead

I did not get chosen in the lottery to run the 10K, and just as well, as the starting point has moved to the Western Harbour Crossing toll booth, which means running through the cross-harbour tunnel (which I hear is a slog) and finishing at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay. 

Running in October will also be more challenging with the humidity than the usual time of late January, early February, and I have hardly been training either, opting instead to walking.

Nevertheless, we wish the government good luck in trying to persuade seniors to get jabbed... they can be a tough crowd!

The Polarization Continues

The entrance to Baptist University is effectively blocked by mini Stonehenges

As I write this, students at Chinese University of Hong Kong are retreating -- about a dozen volunteers have come with cars to take them out.

This ends the four-day occupation of the university safely... but they have left behind a giant mess.

However it seems Hong Kong Polytechnic University is still going strong, the students have prevented any traffic from going through the Cross Harbour Tunnel and even have security checks of every person who walks into the campus.

A fire erupted near Chinese University prompting evacuation

I talked to one professor from the University of Hong Kong -- and it is also his alma mater -- and he said this was the first time he ever had to climb over barricades to get to his office.

The situation has become untenable and the heads of nine universities here have issued an open letter to the government urging the authorities to set up and resolve the political deadlock in the name of safety and security of the whole city.

The letter says:

Hong Kong society is currently fractured, with deep divisions across social groups, political parties, and even amongst family and friends. The past week has seen a rapid escalation of violence and confrontation throughout Hong Kong: several universities are now under protestors’ control; on-campus hazardous materials have been taken; staff and students have left campus out of fear for their personal safety. These events are challenging our universities in the most fundamental way.

No political viewpoint gives a licence to damage property, employ physical threats, or use violence against individuals. It is regrettable that societal disagreement has led to university campuses becoming major political battlefields, and that the government response has so far not been effective. However, any demand that universities can simply fix the problem is disconnected from reality: these complicated and challenging situations neither originate from the Universities, nor can they be resolved through University disciplinary processes. They are reflections of Hong Kong-wide disagreement, and the government must take the lead with swift and concrete action to resolve this political deadlock and to restore safety and public order now.

Earlier in the day students manning No. 2 bridge in Sha Tin

Hong Kong is our home. We call on all quarters of society to work together to bring peace and order back to Hong Kong.

Prof. KUO Way, President, City University of Hong Kong
Prof. Roland T. CHIN President & Vice-Chancellor, Hong Kong Baptist University
Prof. Leonard CHENG, President, Lingnan University
Prof. Rocky S. TUAN, President & Vice-Chancellor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Prof. Stephen CHEUNG, President, The Education University of Hong Kong
Prof. TENG Jin-Guang , President, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Prof. Wei SHYY, President, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Prof. WONG Yuk-Shan, President, The Open University of Hong Kong
Prof. ZHANG Xiang, President & Vice-Chancellor, The University of Hong Kong
(Listed in alphabetical order of universities)

Earlier in the day a newspaper article talked about how the government was getting pressure from all sides, including the pro-establishment parties to do something to resolve the situation. Everyone is tired and frustrated by the government's inaction, just constantly condemning the protesters as rioters and how the violence needs to be stopped.

This only gives more license to the police to have their way with anyone, including bystanders, which in turn makes people even angrier. Surely the government must have figured this out by now.

Carrie Lam not very empathetic at town hall meeting

At lunchtime today scores of people came out not only in Central and Taikoo, but also Wong Chuk Hang and Kwun Tong. A lot of Hong Kong's population are angry with the government.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has said that she is open to dialogue and yet she has not had engaged the public since her disastrous town hall meeting on September 26.

What is she waiting for?

The best way to diffuse tensions is to initiate dialogue but instead Lam would rather inspect trashed MTR stations than meet with people to hear their frustrations and fears. Did she think people would give up?

As someone who was directly involved in dealing with the Umbrella Movement five years ago, Lam hasn't learnt her lesson at all. She has just dismissed it as a blip in Hong Kong's history. For the rest of us, those 79 days were seared in our memories.

Civil service head Joshua Law sends warning to civil servants

Meanwhile civil servants may want to think twice about protesting. Secretary for the Civil Service Joshua Law Chi-kong wrote a letter to the 180,000 civil servants and warned they would face immediate suspension or other disciplinary action if they were arrested for taking part in unlawful activities.

"The government will not tolerate civil servants breaching the law," he wrote. "It would be difficult for the community to accept an arrested civil servant being allowed to continue to exercise the powers and functions of office.

"In this regard, we will interdict the officer in the public interest when an inquiry against him is being undertaken," he wrote.

If this letter was written a year ago, most people would agree. But given what has happened in the past five months, including a rally for civil servants to protest against the extradition bill, most residents would not mind if a civil servant was arrested and continued working -- until they were convicted.

What happened to following the tenet of "innocent until proven guilty"?

The polarization continues...

Hong Kong in Grief

Students mourn the death of Chow Tsz-lok who died this morning

Hong Kong has been in mourning since this morning when news broke that a 22-year-old student who was in a coma for several days had cardiac arrested and died in hospital.

Chow Tsz-lok fell from the third floor to the second floor of the car park at Sheung Tak Estate in Tseung Kwan O in the early hours of November 4. It is quite murky about what happened to Chow, a second year computer science undergraduate student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

At lunchtime people came out to protest against the police

During that time the police were firing tear gas in the area and there are reports Chow was trying to flee the tear gas and fell, while others looking at videos from that evening think that he might have been pushed or thrown because of the height of the barricades in the car park.

The other issue with this incident that isn't clear either is that it is believed the police were obstructing an ambulance that may have been rushing to get to Chow.  And there are video clips of someone who is believed to be Chow being pushed by someone... but who? And is that Chow?

There are too many questions, but the main thing now is that everyone is upset and they believe the police obstructed paramedics from getting to Chow by at least 20 minutes.

Some volunteer first aiders tried to help Chow at the time, but the injuries he sustained were so serious they were unable to help him. One described the diagnosis in detail on Twitter and at the same time talked of his feeling of helplessness, as he didn't have the proper equipment to help him.

Central was clogged with angry protesters at lunchtime

In hospital, two operations were carried out to relieve the swelling in his head, but they were not enough to help Chow recover. The pressure in Chow's head was give times the normal level, making it a life-threatening condition.

During a graduation ceremony at HKUST today, the university president Wei Shyy was in tears as he announced Chow's death, where the audience observed a moment of silence. Some of the graduating students wore masks and held up their hand, a symbol of the five demands.

At lunchtime, just like when the anti-mask bill was announced over a month ago, people flooded the streets in Central, Taikoo Shing, and the HKUST campus. Some wore masks and shouted slogans, denouncing the police and that the government should meet all five demands that were laid out months ago.

They stopped traffic in Central and Taikoo Shing, and would not disperse until around 2pm.

This evening people converged to the parking lot where Chow fell to pay their last respects. There were so many people that they stood for a long time just to inch their way forward, some clutching flowers, others handmade posters.

#LIVE: It is now 8.09 pm, 12 hours since 22-year-old HKUST student Alex Chow was certified dead. With their eyes turning scarlet, many of the people who have gathered at the carpark starts to sob. The gloom has suffused the building. #HongKongProtests pic.twitter.com/eN2YudDSCF

— Ezra Cheung (@ezracheungtoto) November 8, 2019

 

This unprecedented outpouring of grief is for a young person who was a promising student, but it is also mourning for the state of Hong Kong. It allowed people to grieve for Chow and the city, after months of frustration and anger.

And to top it off, six pan-democratic lawmakers, including Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, Au Nok-hin, and Ray Chan have been contacted by police tonight to say they are going to be arrested for trying to obstruct the passage of the extradition bill in the Legislative Council back in May.

Is this even legal? And what has prompted these arrests?

There are far too many questions than answers in Hong Kong, leaving all of us confused and even more frustrated...

You May be Eating Microplastics

Microplastics like these end up in the stomachs of many local fish and seafood

Following yesterday's post about beach clean-ups around Hong Kong, Greenpeace says microplastics are found in 60 percent of a fish species called wild flathead grey mullet that is consumed by locals.

Researchers at the Education University of Hong Kong have found an average of 4.3 fragments of microplastics in each fish, with one ingesting up to 80 fragments. They come from plastic bottles, packaging, straws, cups and single-use cutlery that have been broken down in the ocean.

A locally caught flathead grey mullet in a restaurant

"Mudflats and sediments under the sea are like restaurants for marine species," says Greenpeace campaigner Chan Hall-sion. "When both of them are polluted with microplastics, that will become the food for the flathead grey mullet and other types of marine animals."

Chan says there are at least 170 marine species including mussels, lobster, silver herring and oysters that contain microplastics.

Last month, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's division of life sciences found that microbeads -- that can be found in items ranging from facial scrubs to toothpaste -- end up in the digestive tracts of fish and other marine creatures. This is not new, but confirms it's happening in Hong Kong.

And an even more mind-boggling statistic -- an earlier Education University study found Hong Kong beaches recorded an average of 5,000 pieces of microplastics per square metre -- 2.4 times higher than the concentration in the United States.

Some plastics that were found in the flathead grey mullet

If that's not enough impetus to get people to cut down on their use of plastic, I don't know what is. Some may say they don't eat local seafood, so who cares? But this is for the health of the oceans everywhere. We cannot afford to have marine life die around the world because we're dumping garbage into the world's oceans. Water travels everywhere.

There are so many small things we can do to drastically cut down on the amount of plastic we use -- like not buying bottled water, using reusable bags for groceries, not using disposable plates, cups and cutlery, and no straws.

How hard can it be to make these changes for the health of not only the planet, but us too?

China's Cheap Labour No More

There are still armies of factory workers -- but they want better pay to stay

On my first day at work in Beijing at a state media company in 2007, my new boss took me out to lunch and I remember him saying the supply of migrant workers was "limitless".

He believed (or wanted me to believe) there was an endless supply of cheap labour for factories.

I was very skeptical -- eventually the country would run out of migrant workers because everyone had one-child families save for ethnic minorities.

Ten years later I wish I could go back to him and say, "Remember you told me the supply of factory workers was 'limitless'? You were completely wrong!"

Workers come from the countryside and are hardly "limitless"

Factory owners are having a tough time not only finding but retaining workers these days.

Rising labour costs have led to a high turnover rate among factory workers. Wuhan University did a survey of factories in Guangdong and Hubei and found 26 percent of workers in the Pearl River Delta had changed jobs.

"With high turnover, they have to pay workers more to retain them," said Albert Park, one of the designers of the survey and is a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The average monthly wages in China rose to 4,126 yuan (US$603.78) per month in 2015, almost comparable to Brazil and much higher than developing economies like India and Vietnam.

In addition, in order to gain subsidies and tax benefits from the government, more than one-third of mainland factory owners try to gain favoritism from the state or the Communist Party. More than half surveyed received government subsidies, which account for 2.6 percent of their sales revenues.

Some factory owners resort to using robots to cut costs

About 23 percent of factory owners do this by serving in local parliaments and political consultative committees, while 39 percent are party members.

Because of rising labour costs, 40 percent of manufacturers in Guangdong and Hubei use robots in production. To Park, this means factory owners aren't sure demand will improve and so they are cautious about making large investments.

How much has changed in a decade! While we're pleased to know migrant workers are earning more money, the cost of living for them has increased too.

What they really need is access to education to further improve their employment opportunities. However, this is the next hurdle that really needs to be tackled so that children of migrant workers will at least see more hope for the next generation in terms of social and economic mobility.

Hong Kong's Polluted Air Persists

Hong Kong's air quality can go to extremes like these pictures show...

Well what do you know! Us living in Hong Kong are breathing in air that exceeds the World Health Organization's standards for over 280 days last year.

The black spots are Des Voeux Road in Central and Hennessy Road in Causeway Bay.

"The overall picture is worse than we thought," said Simon Ng Ka-wing, chief research officer at Civic Exchange, a think tank that worked with the University of Science and Technology on the research.

"Our government must make it a policy priority to improve roadside air quality in major urban street canyons."

It's interesting Civic Exchange says this when its founder Christine Loh Kung-wai is the Under Secretary for Environment...

The WHO daily air quality guideline says PM2.5 should not exceed 25 micrograms per cubic metre. But in the Hong Kong study conducted between March last year and February this year, Central and Causeway Bay exceeded the standard by almost 280 days of the year.

In districts like Western, Admiralty and most of Wan Chai, the air quality standard was surpassed by over 200 days, while it was 150 days in North Point.

Des Voeux Road in Central was the most polluted at an average of 55 micrograms per cubic metre -- far exceeding the WHO guideline of 10 and the local guideline of 35.

It was followed by Hennessy Road, between Tonnochy Road and Yee Wo Street in Causeway Bay, and King's Road in North Poing.

Professor Jimmy Fung, head of HKUST's division of environment, said areas with good ventilation and lower buildings helped disperse pollution.

He said the government should devise a long-term strategy to improve wind and air dispersion in urban street canyons through new developments and urban redevelopment opportunities, as well as policies to decrease traffic emissions.

Ng says hundreds of thousands are exposed to roadside pollution on a daily basis, and a recent University of Hong Kong study says a high PM2.5 concentration led to a higher death rate among the elderly by increasing their risk of developing cardiovascular problems.

It's shocking to find the PM2.5 levels were so high considering over two months in that study period the Occupy Movement shut down major thoroughfares and supposedly decreased air pollution... or so we thought.

In the meantime, Fung says the government should consider pedestrianization schemes and low-emission zones in locations where roadside air quality is really bad.

But will the government earnestly try to do something about this? With the task of trying to sell the electoral reform package to the people, air quality probably doesn't have as high a priority...