Daily Cases To Dip Further, But Zero Difficult: Hung

An infectious disease expert, Ivan Hung, on Monday said he believes it will be difficult to get to zero Covid infections in Hong Kong, even though he expects daily cases to dip below one hundred soon.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, the University of Hong Kong scholar said he believes there’ll be a slight rebound in cases after the Easter break, even though the overall situation is improving.

However, he said the authorities need to do more to encourage vaccination, especially among children and elderly people.

"It's expected the number of cases will drop further to several hundreds a day or less than a hundred. But there will still be patients because the virus is highly transmissible," the government's vaccine advisor said.

"Our so-called 'zero infections' goal is difficult. But if we have a high enough vaccination rate and good infection control measures, there's no need to worry too much."

Hung also said he doesn’t see a strong need for Hong Kong to conduct compulsory universal testing, given the vast amount of resources and manpower needed and the fact that it may only find several thousand cases when the epidemic situation is already stabilising.

Separately, the expert said the clinical trials for three mainland-made vaccines – two manufactured by Sinopharm and one by Sinovac – will start here next month, and researchers are seeking 1,800 people to take part.

He said he expects the second generation of inactivated-virus vaccines, which are based on the BA.1 strain of Omicron, to work against other variants too.

Hung added that he believes researchers will be able to collect all the data within half a year.