To keep out the virus, the city shut up shop – and shut down protests. But low vaccination rates mean it has now stormed our defences
The streets are quiet. The beaches are inaccessible. Theatres, museums, schools, gyms and libraries are shut. Hong Kong is going round in circles, closing down and opening up just a little bit, in an endless loop that has everybody feeling claustrophobic. For more than two years, the city’s success in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic relied not on vaccinations, but almost entirely on keeping the virus out, and making it hard for people to get together in large groups. Now the virus has breached the defences – and we’re paying the price.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Hong Kong’s biggest political upheaval in decades was still under way, with daily protests, at times violent, and countless arrests. The health crisis allowed for the imposition of emergency measures that kept the virus at bay – along with crowds of people. For most of the past two years, no more than four people could meet up in public; now that number is two. It has been difficult to disentangle the measures taken to prevent illness from those taken to prevent political protests – and this mix has bred a toxic mistrust.
