HK vaccine rates spike as outbreak shatters COVID-free dreams

The global financial hub had been able to keep the coronavirus pandemic from disrupting activities for most of the past two years, using stringent border restrictions.

That success had the effect of downplaying the need for widespread vaccination, especially among older people, many of whom are poor, not very mobile, and less interested in lifting travel restrictions.

"Getting the elderly vaccinated has been difficult," said Lau Chak Sing, head of the medicine department at the University of Hong Kong, who blames, among other factors, the "lack of a sense of urgency because Hong Kong was doing very well."

As in many other places, however, the arrival of the highly transmissable Omicron variant has significantly changed the shape of the pandemic and official responses in Hong Kong.