HK eases Covid zero, China expert arrives

Hong Kong will report more than 34,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases Monday, local media outlets including Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po reported, as the city’s government is forced to move away from key pillars of its strict Covid Zero strategy.

The Covid-19 response team leader of China’s National Health Commission is arriving in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, airline bookings out of the city are surging as residents seek to leave after authorities unveiled measures to combat a surge in Covid cases.

New Zealand is removing the requirement for vaccinated travelers to self-isolate on arrival, while the Philippines Metro Manila region plans to shift to the lowest alert level as infections stay low.

New York will lift the state’s mask mandate indoors in schools on March 2 due to lower infections and hospitalizations across the state and less strict guidance from U.S. health authorities, Governor Kathy Hochul announced.

Key Developments:

• Virus Tracker: Cases exceed 435 million; deaths top 5.9 million
• Vaccine Tracker: More than 10.7 billion doses administered
• Hong Kong’s Covid crackdown hits domestic helpers the hardest

Hong Kong Moves Away From Covid Zero 
Patients with mild cases in the city are no longer sent to hospital or isolation facilities as there’s no space; instead they’re asked to stay home until they test negative with rapid antigen tests.

Close contacts, no longer recorded by the city’s elaborate contact tracing process, are moving around freely though they’re technically supposed to home quarantine for at least a week. The app used to flag locations with confirmed cases has suspended risk alerts.

Thie quick erosion of core Covid Zero practices shows the difficulty of maintaining an approach that seeks to wipe out the virus when faced with more infectious strains like omicron. Hong Kong saw a record 26,026 new cases on Sunday and 83 deaths, making the outbreak much bigger than any the zero-tolerance approach pioneered by China has ever quelled.

China Sending Team to Hong Kong for Testing Help 
China is preparing to send a team of about 9,000 people to help with Hong Kong’s compulsory testing anytime, the Sing Tao Daily reported, citing an official from China’s National Health Commission.

Test samples, if needed, can also be sent to Guangdong which can process 1.2 million to 1.5 million tests a day, which is much higher than Hong Kong’s daily capacity of 300,000, acccording to the report, which cited Li Dachuan, the commission’s deputy director of the medical administration bureau.

Hong Kong hasn’t ruled out a lockdown during citywide mandatory Covid testing, Commercial Radio Hong Kong reported, citing Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan.

Top China Covid Expert in Hong Kong 
The official, Liang Wannian, will advise the city in its fight against the virus, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified people. Hong Kong authorities are warning that cases haven’t peaked yet.

The visit is a sign that China is treating the situation in Hong Kong as dire and requiring top-level guidance, the newspaper reported, adding that Hong Kong’s first makeshift mobile cabin hospitals will begin operating Monday.  Bloomberg