Hong Kong has recently announced its plans to begin a city-wide Covid-19 vaccination campaign, similar to how Singapore is addressing its own fight against the pandemic.
The city has been finalising details of the campaign and will likely begin mass vaccinations in February, said Patrick Nip Tak-kuen, Hong Kong’s secretary for the civil service. The government has also stated that it will be prioritising high-risk groups for the first round of vaccination rollouts.
Some of these prioritised groups include health workers, those working in care facilities for the elderly and people with disabilities, and residents aged above 85 years, who have been proven to be especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
Thus far, the city has approved the use of three vaccines, those from Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford and Sinovac.
The news comes just as the city recorded some of it’s lowest number of cases since November 2020. While this is seemingly optimistic news, the city remains on high alert as this current fourth wave of infections has been labelled as ‘very worrying’ by both locals and officials.
Over in Singapore, healthcare workers at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases were the first to receive the first dose of the vaccine on 30 December 2020, with the first round of priority vaccinations beginning in January 2021. Singapore expects vaccinations to continue throughout the year, and the city-state intends to be a key distributer of vaccines within its region.
The vaccine is ‘strongly encouraged’ but voluntary in the city-state, with priority given to the most at-risk groups like healthcare workers, frontline personnel, the elderly and the vulnerable.
