Hong Kong can’t impose snap lockdown: Lam

Bloomberg

Hong Kong doesn’t have the infrastructure to roll out a lockdown and compulsory testing as swiftly as mainland China, according to Chief Executive Carrie Lam, whose announcement of a now-delayed city-wide test sparked chaos and confusion in the financial hub.
The 17.5 million residents of the southern Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen were told that they’d go into a week-long lockdown while three rounds of city-wide testing are conducted. In contrast, Lam said almost three weeks ago that everyone in Hong Kong — home to 7.4 million people — would be tested three times in March, before the plan was indefinitely postponed last week as authorities prioritise vaccinating the elderly and reducing fatalities in what’s become the world’s deadliest outbreak.
Even with the recently increased testing capacity, Hong Kong can still only handle 200,000 to 300,000 samples a day, and would experience some delays, Lam said.
“Hong Kong cannot be compared to mainland Chinese cities in many measures,” she said. “If you ask Hong Kong to learn from Shenzhen today and hold a three-round compulsory universal testing campaign within days, I’m afraid we don’t have that level of capacity.”
Mainland China and Hong Kong are the last two major holdouts pursuing a Covid Zero strategy, though the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant is posing an unprecedented challenge to the approach. The measures imposed in Shenzhen, where just 86 cases were reported on Monday, are typical of an early and severe response that’s managed to stamp out infections over the past two years. But it also risks far-reaching impacts. Apple supplier Hon Hai Precision Industry, known as Foxconn, said it was halting operations at its Shenzhen sites, one of which makes iPhones.
Meanwhile, a flareup in Shanghai has also seen most schools returned to online learning and travel into the city restricted.