Chief Executive Carrie Lam

“Food is heaven to the people.” This well-known Chinese saying is particularly true in the case of Hong Kong which is a food paradise. The recent Father’s Day was the first Sunday after the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government lifted most social distancing measures affecting catering businesses. We were pleased to see that people went to restaurants to celebrate the day with family and friends, while restaurant owners and workers were much encouraged by the increase in business. Just as the Honourable Tommy Cheung, the Legislative Council Member representing the catering sector said, it is hoped that catering businesses will employ more workers so that the unemployment rate of the catering industry can return to single digits.

The above phenomenon illustrates how the suppress and lift strategy adopted by the Government to prevent and control the epidemic is applied when Hong Kong’s epidemic situation has stabilised. Our city has entered a new phase of relaxing restrictions while keeping public health risks in check. Economic activities of all sorts have gradually resumed and people’s lives have generally returned to normal. However, lifting those restrictions does not mean letting our guard down. Before the advent and widespread application of effective vaccines, we still have to stay alert and be well-prepared to make prompt responses whenever necessary.

Developments of the epidemic

Hong Kong’s epidemic situation has remained stable with a total of 114 confirmed cases reported over the past month (from May 25 to June 24). Among them, 102 were imported cases, involving Hong Kong residents returning from overseas with the largest number from Pakistan, the Philippines, India and Bangladesh or their close contacts. All cases were detected because of the testing of inbound travellers from overseas. Since we have adopted a test and hold strategy, ie inbound travellers can only leave a designated location after receiving the virus test result, the chance of the virus spreading into the community has been minimised.

However, during the period, the emergence of a local cluster of 12 confirmed cases, the source of which remains unknown, has caused considerable concerns. These 12 cases involved the family members, colleagues and residents living in the same housing block of the first confirmed patient. It was also the first time in Hong Kong that an ambulance officer was suspected of contracting the virus in the course of transporting an infected person to hospital. We were highly concerned as the scope of infection was rather broad. Staff and experts from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) and relevant departments went to the scene immediately to conduct an inspection, trace contacts, carry out large-scale virus testing for high-risk people (including residents living in the same housing block, colleagues of the confirmed patients, etc), as well as to step up cleaning of facilities.

As five confirmed patients were found to be living in the same units on different floors of the same block, for the sake of prudence, we evacuated 24 households living in those units to quarantine centres. In this cluster, the first case was confirmed on May 31 while the last one was confirmed on June 13. Much to our relief, no more infections have since been detected. Unfortunately, two elderly residents who were infected passed away recently to become the fifth and sixth COVID-19 deaths in Hong Kong. I would like to express my sincere condolences to their families.

The intermittent emergence of local infection clusters reminds us once again of the presence of undetected infections in the community. It is imperative for the Government to step up virus testing to keep the epidemic in check through early identification, early isolation and early treatment.

Anti-epidemic efforts

As the local epidemic situation has remained generally stable, following the direction we started to take last month, we have continued to relax anti-epidemic measures in a moderate and phased manner. On social distancing, K3 to S5 students have all resumed classes; public facilities and business premises (including the two theme parks) previously closed have been allowed to reopen subject to fulfilment of infection control requirements; the number of persons allowed in group gatherings in public places has also been relaxed from eight to 50. With a weak economy and a rising unemployment rate, such relaxations are timely; they also help meet people’s aspiration to resume social life.

As recommended by our experts, we have been stepping up virus testing to ascertain the presence of the virus in the community. In the first half of June, an average of 4,000 virus tests a day were conducted by public institutions, an increase of over 60% compared with May. Our short-term target is to enhance the testing capacity of public institutions to 7,000 virus tests a day. With the introduction of a “health code” to be used for travelling between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, and a “travel bubble” to be set up with specific overseas countries, people’s demand for virus testing will increase significantly. The Department of Health (DH) is liaising with private institutions to help them enhance their testing capacity. Major measures implemented by the Government in response to developments over the past month are set out below:

Furthermore, the Government arranged several special flights in the past month to bring home over 900 Hong Kong residents stranded in India and Nepal.

Striking the right balance

We are fully prepared to fight an enduring battle against the virus and will continue to adopt the suppress and lift strategy to strive for the right balance. I once used the description “three-way tug-of-war” to illustrate the need to consider the three factors of public health, economic impact and social acceptance when making adjustments to our control measures. Striking the right balance is not an exact science and is easier said than done. We have to consider various factors and then act decisively. That said, let me make it clear again that political considerations absolutely play no part in such assessments. Therefore, the allegation that prohibiting group gatherings of over 50 persons involves consideration of suppressing protests and demonstrations is totally groundless. As a matter of fact, a variety of large scale activities, including ball games, open concerts, and even the annual dragon boat races, etc are affected by the same restriction.

Anti-epidemic supplies

To help our people to better fight this enduring battle, we arranged for free reusable masks, ie CuMask, to be provided for each Hong Kong citizen. The response was positive with a total of over 1.44 million registrations received during the one-month registration period, covering more than 3.93 million people. The masks have been delivered to recipients by Hongkong Post. The Government has also directly delivered the CuMask to schools, residential homes and social welfare institutions for use by relevant individuals.

In addition, from next week, a pack of 10 disposable masks will be distributed to each residential address in Hong Kong. These masks are the first batch of masks procured by the Government under the Local Mask Production Subsidy Scheme. We would like to share these masks with our people as part of our collective fight against the virus.

Appealing for stability in Hong Kong

Battling this epidemic, I hope that people will cherish even more the hard-earned stable epidemic situation which has allowed us to revive our economy and improve local employment. In the same way, Hong Kong cannot stand chaos. Activities such as vandalism, advocating Hong Kong independence, illegal possession of explosives and firearms, etc have clearly threatened national security. The enactment of legislation for safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong SAR by the central authorities at the state level is to plug the loophole in our legal system and enforcement mechanisms so as to restore stability to our society as soon as possible and better protect national security. It is the constitutional responsibility of the Hong Kong SAR to safeguard national security, and also the common obligation of nationals of the entire country, including Hong Kong people.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam issued this article titled Resuming Activities after Fighting the Virus for Five Months on June 25.