In Hong Kong, the number of people dying from the Covid 19 disease has increased dramatically in recent days. The omicron wave hits the Chinese special administrative region hard, reports the “Financial Times” (FT).
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Since omicron was first detected, each case of corona in Hong Kong has been 20 to 50 times more deadly than in comparable countries, according to the report. Currently, five percent of infections there would end fatally. In Japan and South Korea, the percentage is 0.2 percent; in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore it is 0.1 percent. An average of 284 people die from Covid-19 in Hong Kong, according to the report.
The reason for the high deaths is the large number of unvaccinated older people, notes “FT” journalist John Burn-Murdoch on Twitter.
Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Berlin Charité, shared Burn-Murdoch’s assessment on Twitter, warning: “Omicron is not mild in unvaccinated older people.”
Vaccination protection remains comparatively low, especially among Hong Kong residents over 80 years of age. More than two-thirds of those in the age group were not fully immunized when the wave of omicrons began, Burn-Murdoch tweeted. The Financial Times reports that there is enough corona vaccine available.
However, the large number of unvaccinated people is not the only problem that makes Hong Kong’s elderly population so vulnerable to severe Covid-19 sales, the newspaper reports. Most of the vaccinated older Hong Kongers were vaccinated with the Chinese Sinovac vaccine. One or two doses of this vaccine provide little protection against omicron, he said.
Meanwhile, the number of patients in hospitals in the special administrative zone is increasing: corpses must be temporarily stored in containers, reports the “Financial Times”. “We don’t have the knowledge or the equipment to fight,” Stephanie Law, a senior executive at the Hong Kong Elderly Care Association, told the newspaper. The setting is reminiscent of the conditions in Italy or New York at the beginning of the corona pandemic.
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The Financial Times quotes Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, as saying that efforts to vaccinate vulnerable age groups against the coronavirus were “too weak and too late”. “We’re riding the wave even though we could have gotten ahead of ourselves.”
The status of a “Covid-free city” was also problematic, writes the “FT”. As a result, many people would have felt safe and decided not to get vaccinated.
The number of deaths among the general population in Hong Kong has now reached a world record. In the last seven days, an average of 36.09 people per million inhabitants have died (as of March 11), reports the “Financial Times”. In Germany, the seven-day average on March 12 was 0.25 per 100,000 population. (teaspoonful)
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