COVID-19 patients quarantined at home in Hong Kong will soon be required to wear a tracking bracelet to make sure that they stay at home.
The new mandate, which will be effective starting on Friday, July 15, was announced by health secretary Lo Chung-mau at a press conference on Monday. The kind of bracelet to be used has yet to be specified.
Back in 2020, new Hong Kong arrivals had to wear tracking wristbands during their 14-day quarantine. The wristbands came with a QR code that wearers had to scan to check in with an app on their phone. Hong Kong later upgraded the wristbands to be able to track the wearer’s movements.
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Hong Kong has applied a version of China’s strict “zero-COVID” strategy from the beginning of the pandemic. The strategy has included quarantine measures for travelers and enforced 14-day quarantines for all new arrivals.
The new tracking measure follows as cases have rapidly increased over the past few weeks. There are close to 3,000 new cases reported per day just in the last week, compared to a little over 500 average per day the month before.
Hong Kong has shown a high death rate when infections peaked in March this year as the Omicron variant first ravaged much of the world. The casualties were mostly unvaccinated elderly. In March, only 37% of Hong Kong’s over 80 years old have received vaccinations, versus 81% of people ages 12 and up.
But, unlike mainland China which up to now has only allowed Chinese-made traditional inactivated vaccines SinoVac and SinoPharm, Hong Kong has made an mRNA vaccine produced by the German company BioNTech available along with SinoVac.
Information for this briefing was found via Covid Vaccine HK, Bloomberg, and the sources mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
