Ting Chan has seen Hong Kong¡¯s pandemic situation lurch from over-the-top caution to outright chaos.
A nurse at one of the city¡¯s public hospitals, she¡¯s been a ground-level participant in the strict ¡°COVID zero¡± strategy that has kept the financial hub largely free of the virus for the past two years. Key to that has been Hong Kong¡¯s mandatory hospitalization of all COVID-19 cases, regardless of whether they¡¯re mildly ill or even asymptomatic. While that¡¯s helped keep the total death toll at a little over 200 for the entire pandemic, those elaborate defenses have collapsed in the face of the highly-transmissible omicron variant.
The city¡¯s current outbreak, with 6,116 cases logged on Thursday, is the worst Hong Kong has seen. But even with just 17 COVID-19 patients classed as critical on Wednesday, hospitals are already overwhelmed and the health infrastructure is crumbling.
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