'Give Elderly Home Residents The BioNTech Jab'

The Patients and Healthcare Professionals Rights Association said authorities should vaccinate elderly people living in care homes with the BioNTech jab, so they're get stronger and quicker protection against Covid-19.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, the association's convener, Jeffrey Pong, said it takes either 21 days for people who receive two BioNTech jabs or around four months for those getting three doses of the Sinovac vaccine to have proper immunity.

He said the administration should give BioNTech to elderly care home residents unless they or their families refuse to give consent.

"The important thing is to complete the vaccination schedule as quickly as possible," he said.

Pong said authorities should also allow children who have received one Sinovac shot to switch to BioNTech as they head back to school later this month.

Meanwhile, the vice president of the Hong Kong Society for Infectious Diseases, Wilson Lam, called on people to get jabbed even as the fifth wave of infections is easing.

"I would expect the sixth wave to be around in Hong Kong maybe in six to nine months' time, because by then we would have lost some of our antibodies... and then we will be like last year or early this year when everybody just rushed to get vaccinated, and the demand is too huge and we're not able to cater to all the demand at the same time," he said.

Lam said compared with New Zealand, Hong Kong's inoculation rate is rather low, which is why the death rate among the elderly here is around four times higher in the current outbreak.