Hong Kong should impose a strict, city-wide lockdown for nine days to rein in its snowballing COVID-19 outbreak rather than prolong social-distancing restrictions that are strangling business, lawmaker Michael Tien said.
All non-essential businesses would be shuttered and residents tested three times over the lockdown period, Tien, a member of the city’s Legislative Council and a Hong Kong deputy to China’s National People’s Congress, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.
“I’d rather have a quick fix than long-term pain,” he said. “It is time we bite the bullet and take a quick one.”
The lockdown should run from March 19-28, straddling two weekends to minimize business losses and give the city time to build up its testing and isolation capacity, Tien said. Everyone in the city would be tested twice during the lockdown, and a third time after the lockdown ends, he added.
One person per household would be allowed out for one or two hours a day to buy groceries and essential items, with the lockdown enforced by police, Tien said, adding that mandatory testing without restricting people’s movements is “crazy.” Only people working in essential services such as healthcare and food supplies would be allowed to go to work.
“This is a wide appeal to everyone in Hong Kong,” Tien said. “We all have to pitch in to help.”
Tien is one of the first legislators to call so prominently for a mainland-style lockdown, with Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam repeatedly dismissing the prospect, instead saying the city will engage in a mass testing effort and may consider localized stay-at-home orders. Lam unveiled details late Tuesday of a plan to test the city’s 7.4 million residents three times in March, and to extend social-distancing curbs — including limits on restaurant dining and family gatherings — until at least mid-April.
Beijing, which has successfully contained virus flareups with strict lockdowns in places like Xi’an, has backed a full lockdown in its talks with Hong Kong, people familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg News, saying it’s more effective at containing surging virus cases in a shorter period of time.
After a long period of relatively few cases, Hong Kong is now experiencing its worst outbreak of the pandemic, with new infections now in the thousands each day. The flareup caught officials unawares and is challenging the city’s zero-tolerance approach to the virus.
Both Hong Kong and the mainland continue to pursue the COVID Zero strategy, which was successful at walling out the virus in the initial stage of the pandemic with its strict border curbs, mandatory quarantines and target of eliminating cases. But it has been outfoxed by more transmissible variants such as omicron, and is leaving China increasingly isolated as other parts of the world start to live alongside COVID.
Hong Kong is expected to announce a raft of support for businesses in its budget Wednesday, a move that will likely drive the government to its fourth deficit in a row in the coming fiscal year, the longest period of shortfalls in almost a decade. More than two years of stop-start restrictions, including curbs on the number of people who can dine out at restaurants, have hit the economy, with banks including Morgan Stanley downgrading the city’s growth forecasts.
The ongoing isolation — Hong Kong drastically limits flights into the city and is barring airlines that have positive COVID cases — is damaging its reputation as Asia’s pre-eminent financial hub, with some companies relocating offices and personnel to rival Singapore.
The call marks a shift in position for Tien, who told Bloomberg last week that a lockdown of the city would hit the economy and may not be effective at eradicating the outbreak if it isn’t paired with adequate facilities to isolate cases and track people’s movements. Tien reiterated Wednesday his call for quarantine capacity to be built up.
“I’ve always had reservations about a complete lockdown because economically it causes everybody too much” pain, said Tien, who is also the chairman and founder of the G2000 Group chain of clothing stores. “The reason why I have a change of heart is because I look at my retail numbers in the last two weeks. It has dropped 70% from the weeks before.”
“Now the situation is business has dropped to a point it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re open or not,” he said. “Nine days is very short.”
