Private hospitals and doctors in Hong Kong have cast doubts on the viability of them giving Covid-19 jabs for a fee, despite a government insistence that manufacturers were “striving” to offer vaccines to the sector. The private operators on Friday said they were sceptical about the scheme because free shots were easily available to residents and there were uncertainties on when and how many mainland China or non-resident patients would travel to pay for vaccination. Doctors and patients’ rights groups have already highlighted the need to maintain government-subsidised Covid-19 vaccinations in the long term because the coronavirus was likely to become endemic. Private hospitals and doctors say free shots are easily available to residents. Photo: AFP William Ho Shiu-wei, chairman of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association, told that Post that, without clear market demand, there was “little incentive” for the sector to acquire vaccines for sale to the public. Ho said demand among city residents for private vaccination was non-existent, not only because of the cost, but also because jabs given outside the government programme would not be covered by an indemnity fund set up to provide financial support to people who suffered serious vaccine-related complications. Medical sector lawmaker

A lot of people have been turning to wearable fitness devices to help them get into shape. The wearable devices market in China is expected to grow 20 per cent per year to reach a market size of over US$20 billion in 2025, a joint report by BDA and OC&C found. Wearable technology such as headsets and smartwatches can track performance during exercise and measure body functions like heart rate. George Yang, 22, said he bought his Apple Watch when Shanghai went into a strict lockdown in April. The university student said he had suffered chronic neck pain for over a year, which he believes was caused by too much time spent on his computer attending online courses. Yang said the smartwatch helps him stay on track with his fitness goals. He downloaded China’s most popular fitness app, Keep, and hopes to be able to run a full marathon next year. “Young, healthy people [in China] look for wearables that feature health monitoring as well as other functionalities such as entertainment and smart-home functions,” said Anthony Siu, partner and co-head of BDA Shanghai. Source link

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hong Kong will drop almost all Covid-19 measures starting from Thursday, including mandatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for arrivals, its vaccine pass scheme and quarantine requirements for close contacts, following similar action by mainland China. In a related development, the Post learned on Wednesday that Hong Kong is set to reopen its border with the mainland on January 10 at the earliest, with those travelling to the city for business and family needs to be given priority. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu reiterated on Wednesday his aim to fully resume cross-border travel progressively and in an orderly manner starting from mid-January. Travellers in Hong Kong wait to cross the border to enter mainland China. Photo: Sam Tsang From Thursday, the city will become one of the last places in the world to do away with pandemic restrictions. Confirming the Post’s earlier reports, the government announced that it would lift most of the Covid-19 measures imposed in the past three years, but a mandate requiring the wearing of masks would remain. Source link

It is time to “hand over responsibility and power” to Hongkongers in the fight against Covid-19, the city’s health minister has said while insisting residents have become more familiar with the coronavirus. Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau on Thursday sought to reassure the city amid latest changes that marked Hong Kong’s most drastic round of eased pandemic curbs. Lo said infections would not overwhelm the healthcare system and that the lifting of quarantine for close contacts would release 500 workers to cope with the surge in cases. Defending the government’s move to drop the vaccine pass, test mandates for travellers and most social-distancing measures, the health chief said it was not a sudden decision and he was not “giving up” on epidemic control. Hong Kong health secretary Lo Chung-mau. Photo: Jelly Tse “The caseload is no longer a very important part of the current situation. Everyone is more familiar with how to deal with the virus,” Lo told a radio programme on Thursday. “It’s time for change – from the government controlling the situation to handing over the responsibility and power of quarantine and infection prevention to residents. It’s up to them to decide whether they have symptoms to see

Hongkongers have snapped up medicine for diarrhoea and vomiting after cases of the new XBB Omicron strain that causes gastrointestinal problems emerged in the city and over the border. Montmorillonite Powder, an anti-diarrhoea medicine, became a top trending topic on Chinese social media, and dispensaries in Hong Kong on Wednesday reported that residents had switched to hoarding similar drugs after ones combating fever and flu sold out in December. Staff at the Hon Hing Dispensary in the border town of Sheung Shui said all Chinese-made anti-diarrhoea medicine was sold out by Tuesday. Hongkongers have snapped up medicine to treat diarrhoea and vomiting. Photo: K. Y. Cheng Yao Xiaoling, a 30-year-old housewife, said she had visited two dispensaries on Wednesday and finally managed to buy the medicine she was seeking. “I heard that the new Omicron variant would cause diarrhoea, so I bought four boxes of Ya-Hom powder for my mother just in case,” she said, referring to a Chinese medicine used to treat the symptom. Coronavirus infections began rising in Hong Kong in early November and after topping 29,000 at the end of last month, they have started to decline. Health officials on Wednesday confirmed 16,423 infections, of which 401

The number of Covid-19 reinfections in Hong Kong has increased by four times over the past three months amid a surge in cases, but health experts have said the trend is not a cause for concern. According to the latest official statistics, the reinfection rate across last month was about 6 per cent, increasing from 1.5 per cent in September. Respiratory medicine expert Dr Leung Chi-chiu said the rise was expected as the last large outbreak happened more than six months ago in March last year. “As time goes by, even after the first infection, the antibodies and T-cells in the body will drop because they no longer have to fight against the virus,” he said. T-cells are a type of white blood cell crucial for fighting infection. “For most reinfection cases, the symptoms are milder than the first infection.” 07:47 How Hong Kong returned from Covid disaster to bring back Rugby Sevens and reopen to the world How Hong Kong returned from Covid disaster to bring back Rugby Sevens and reopen to the world Overseas studies had shown that patients reinfected with the virus were at greater risk of developing serious symptoms, requiring hospital treatment and death. Source link

Parents of Hong Kong students living in mainland China have called on the city’s authorities to reopen the Lo Wu checkpoint to help their children get to class more easily after the Lunar New Year. A survey published on Friday found that more than one in three pupils preferred the checkpoint for their daily border crossing. Under the long-awaited scheme unveiled on Thursday, at least 60,000 people a day will be allowed to cross the border each way without the need to undergo quarantine through seven land, sea and air checkpoints. They included two main land crossings at Man Kam To and the Lok Ma Chau railway station, alongside Shenzhen Bay Port, which continued to process a small number of travellers daily throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Thousands of cross-border students have withdrawn from Hong Kong schools over the past three years as Covid-19 travel restrictions. Those who did not withdraw have had to attend classes purely online. Cross-border students can return to in-person classes in Hong Kong after the Lunar New Year. Photo: Dickson Lee Iris Liu Kam-fung, programme director at the International Social Service Hong Kong Branch, which carried out the survey, said cross-border students and their families still

Kumiko Lau Wing-mei has represented Hong Kong at international beauty pageants twice, with thousands of followers who track her glamorous posts on Instagram. But few know that the 28-year-old struggled with an eating disorder during the Covid-19 pandemic, gaining and losing weight between contests. At her worst, she would check into a hotel so that nobody would see her eating her way through a pile of junk food. “I could eat up to three McDonald’s burger sets in one go and keep eating non-stop. Then I would stop eating for one or two days,” she said. Kumiko Lau at Miss Supranational 2022 in Poland. Photo: Instagram She did that more than once and gained 10kg in a matter of months. Source link

Scores of central bankers from around the world will gather in Hong Kong next month for a meeting to be hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), marking the first major international financial event since the city fully reopened its border in December. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is getting ready for the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision meeting to be held in March, Clara Chan, acting deputy chief of the de facto central bank, told lawmakers. “We have been preparing for the meeting of central bankers, international financial regulators and the global financial leaders. We encourage more international financial organisations to host events and seminars in Hong Kong,” Chan said during a monthly meeting of the financial affairs panel on Monday. “The HKMA will also work with the local financial sector to visit Southeast Asia and the Middle East to exchange views with the central banks and other financial leaders this year to enhance cross-border cooperation.” The authority is keen to use overseas roadshows to convince central banks and finance companies that it is “business as usual” in Hong Kong after three years of disruptions caused by the pandemic. The city’s reputation as a leading financial hub suffered

China’s wealthiest consumers will continue to splurge on luxury items like designer bags and watches as the economy reopens, even as middle-class shoppers refrain from buying big-ticket items, unnerved by worries about their job prospects and wages, according to Bain & Company. The global consultancy said in its latest report on China’s luxury market that the top 2 per cent of mainland Chinese spenders, who account for more than 40 per cent of spending on luxury items, will be a key driver of market growth in 2023 after Covid-19 restrictions ended a five-year winning streak last year. “There’s no reason why the VIC [very important customers] should stop buying [luxury items] in 2023, because even during the downturn in 2022 they were spending,” said Bruno Lannes, a Shanghai-based senior partner with Bain. “We will see more spending by them in 2023.” Lockdown measures and standstill orders to guard against the spread of Covid-19 across the mainland in 2022 prevented millions of consumers from buying long-coveted personal care products or leather shoes. As shopping malls grappled with a decline in foot traffic, sales skewed toward very wealthy customers, with some high-end brands achieving VIC sales higher than 40 per cent, Bain

Hong Kong’s unofficial spokesperson for all things Covid has been recognised with an Australia Day Award, honouring his diligent and dogged determination to get the facts to people during a time of fear and uncertainty. Aaron Busch – better known by his Twitter handle Tripperhead – received the award at the residence of the Australian consul general to Hong Kong and Macau, Elizabeth Ward, in Repulse Bay last week. “Honoured to present the Australia Day Community Award 2023 to @tripperhead,” Ward tweeted. “Thank you for keeping the international community in #HK informed. A reminder of the power of citizen journalism.” Busch was modest about the recognition. “In that typical Aussie way, I don’t feel I deserve it, I was doing what I do. But you don’t say no to the consul general. It was incredibly nice to receive it and I will have it on the wall for the rest of my life.” Source link

A massive wave of infection that struck more than a billion people in China in around a month late last year after it abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid strategy has waned, with experts now expecting a succession of smaller, less severe waves. But as vaccination momentum declines, some remain concerned about the susceptibility of elderly people to increasingly transmissible variants of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Demand for treatment at Chinese fever clinics peaked on December 23 and remained at a low level late last month, according to official statistics, while the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to hospitals peaked on January 5 and had since declined consistently. “Our nationwide immunity is now at a high level, so there is little chance for another wave to occur in the coming few months,” the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Wu Zunyou, said on Thursday. 02:18 China says Covid outbreak has peaked as Lunar New Year travel rush returns in full swing China says Covid outbreak has peaked as Lunar New Year travel rush returns in full swing He said the coronavirus had been mutating but there was a low possibility that new strains or subvariants would

Mainland China’s biggest city and economic capital must offer a predictable business environment while taking action to ease small companies’ financial burdens as it pursues a sound post-Covid-19 economic recovery, according to the latest Shanghai Position Paper compiled by EUCham. “It is a fragile ecosystem that needs to be maintained and nurtured,” Joerg Wuttke, EUCham’s president, said during a media briefing. “We don’t really see these [efforts being made].” The EUCham comments are significant because Shanghai, which has for long been recognised as the “dragon head” of China’s economy, is highly dependent on multinational businesses for jobs and taxes. Foreign businesses account for 25 per cent of the city’s gross domestic product (GDP), and whose tax payments represent a third of Shanghai’s total. About one in every five jobs in the city is provided by a foreign employer. 01:55 Shanghai Disneyland reopens as China eases strict zero-Covid restrictions Shanghai Disneyland reopens as China eases strict zero-Covid restrictions The number of foreign employees with European companies operating in China has been in decline since last year, Wuttke said. The authorities must simplify visa processes for professionals such as teachers and medical doctors, so that they can offer services needed by expats

The World Health Organization (WHO) will continue to push for studies on how the Covid-19 pandemic started, the agency’s chief said, denying an earlier media report that the mission had been abandoned because of difficulty in conducting crucial studies in China. “I assure you that we will continue to push. We will continue to pursue until we get the answer because this is scientifically correct and morally correct to really pursue and understand the answer to the origins and how this pandemic has started,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general, at a media briefing on Wednesday. The remarks came on the same day the journal Nature reported the agency had shelved the second phase of its scientific investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, citing challenges over attempts to conduct studies in China. China’s foreign ministry pushed back against the Nature report, saying the country has “always supported and participated in global scientific origin tracing”. “China has always maintained an open, transparent and responsible attitude on the issue of origin tracing. China will continue to support global scientific tracing for Covid-19 origins and maintain communication and cooperation with the WHO,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Thursday.

Hong Kong pharmacies are preparing to slash mask prices, while customers have already reduced purchases in anticipation the government next month will lift a mandate that requires people to wear facial coverings. Vendors said they had noticed a drop in sales after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s comments last week that the government would actively consider removing the mask mandate after the winter flu season. Cheung Tak-wing, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Pharmacy, said he expected the price of masks to be halved to HK$30 (US$3.80) for each box from the current range of HK$50 to HK$60. “If the mask mandate is cancelled, the price will drop but it will go down to HK$30 at most, not more,” he said. The Post observed that most customers shopping in at least six mask boutiques in Causeway Bay on Thursday had made small purchases when it came to protective coverings – a stark contrast to the panic buying that emerged at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Source link

Firms such as Mantra, which operates a blockchain ecosystem, and 8 Blocks Capital, a cryptocurrency trading firm, took up office spaces on the fringes of Central, Hong Kong’s main business district. Coingaroo opened two digital currency exchange outlets, one in Mong Kok in Kowloon and the other in Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island, according to its website. Its office is also in Mong Kok. In Tin Hau, a two-storey shop is occupied by CoinWeMit, which offers over-the-counter services for investors in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether. 02:27 Cryptocurrency volatility highlighted by China’s recent crackdown and Elon Musk comments Cryptocurrency volatility highlighted by China’s recent crackdown and Elon Musk comments Their presence brought some welcome relief to a segment that had been mired in a downturn as Covid-19 drove multinational companies away and sparked an exodus of locals and expats. Source link

China is unlikely to see a new wave of Covid-19 outbreaks despite confirmation that the highly transmissible XBB.1.5 subvariant has been found in the community, according to a Chinese medical expert. The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday confirmed the first case of infection by the Omicron subvariant in China, raising concerns that it could trigger outbreaks across the country. The variant now accounts for over 80 per cent of cases in the United States, where it has spread rapidly since December. The World Health Organization (WHO) said last month that the strain was “the most transmissible variant that has been detected yet”. Li Tongzeng, chief doctor with the respiratory and infectious diseases department at Beijing Youan Hospital, told state media outlet China News Service that new infections caused by XBB.1.5 could not be ruled out. However, Li also said Covid-19 immunity in China remained strong despite the new strain being found in the country, and while there might be sporadic infections, a major outbreak was unlikely. “At present, the newly confirmed cases are mainly people who have not previously been infected, and the probability of being infected twice by the exact same strain is very

Municipal authorities in Hangzhou in eastern China dismissed suggestions that another wave of Covid-19 was sweeping across the city after clusters of new infections were discovered in two schools. Images circulating on social media since Sunday evening showed a notice posted at a primary school in the city saying 10 pupils from the same class had tested positive for the coronavirus. The notice said the school administration had decided to suspend the class for four days, with all pupils from that class being advised to rest at home and notify the school if Covid symptoms appeared. Children who tested positive should quarantine at home and return to school only when their PCR tests were negative, the notice said. The notice said the decision was based on a “higher authorities’ document”, but did not specify which document it was referring to. On Monday, the education bureau in Xihu, a district in Hangzhou, confirmed an outbreak at a primary school, and said the school had been notified by parents on Sunday that 10 pupils had positive rapid antigen test results and were symptomatic. Source link

Shanghai has become the first major city in China to scrap a physical education (PE) test for the high school entrance exam because of concerns over lingering health effects from Covid-19 infections. The announcement on Tuesday came after local lawmakers and parents called to have the test – scheduled for April or May – cancelled over worries that students had not fully recovered from the latest wave of coronavirus infections that swept across the country after China abandoned its zero-Covid policy. Public health experts have estimated that 80 per cent of the population had been infected since the restrictions were eased. Last month Shi Zheng, a deputy in the Shanghai People’s Congress, said she advised that the test be cancelled because strenuous exercise would not be suitable for students still recovering from infections, according to a report by local news portal The Paper. Many parents had raised concerns to local education officials that daily fitness activities, particularly the cardio-intensive exercises, would be dangerous for children who had just recovered from Covid-19, the report said. 04:43 China’s slow road to economic recovery after dropping its zero-Covid policies China’s slow road to economic recovery after dropping its zero-Covid policies On Tuesday, the

Hong Kong health experts on Thursday backed the city’s extension of its mask mandate to March 8, but children’s rights groups questioned the move as they raised concern it would further jeopardise the development of young residents. Health authorities a day earlier announced the two-week extension, which applies to public transport, paid areas in MTR and public spaces. Offenders will be fined HK$5,000 (US$637) on the spot. The decision came hot on the heels of Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po’s renewed pledge to revive a Covid-hit economy in his latest budget blueprint unveiled earlier on Wednesday. Government pandemic adviser Professor Ivan Hung Fan-ngai on Thursday voiced support for the extension, saying influenza viruses could be better contained under warmer temperatures. “When we lift the mask mandate, there is likely to be a resurgence of flu cases,” he warned. “But if we scrap the mask mandate in warmer weather, the virus will be less active and the risk of developing complications will be lower.” He added the city’s population had a weaker immunity against influenza and other upper respiratory tract infections due to limited exposure in the past few years. Hung suggested removing the outdoor mask mandate in early March, after