Govt To Study Providing Omicron Boosters To More

Civil service secretary Ingrid Yeung said on Monday that about 11,600 people have made appointments to get the second-generation BioNTech vaccine since bookings opened the day before.

The minister who is in charge of the city's Covid-19 vaccination drive said although the new Omicron-specific jab is only available as a fourth dose for now, authorities will study whether people can also receive it for their second and third shots.

“At present, almost 93 percent of the population in Hong Kong has received two shots. The percentage of the population that's triple-jabbed is also high, it's reached 82 percent. And some have been infected after they got the third jab and they don't need another booster,” Yeung told an RTHK programme.

“So, how big the demand will be, and whether we can [use the new jab] as a third shot, we will look at how things go.”

The government has earlier ordered 1.9 million doses of the BioNTech bivalent vaccine, and about 770,000 shots have arrived.

The president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Hong Kong, William Chui, told RTHK that he believes allowing the elderly to receive the bivalent vaccine as their second or third shots, or even as the first jab, will give them more incentives to be inoculated.

“Of course the government’s expert panel has to look at whether the second generation vaccine can be used as the first jab. But if we look at Singapore, it allows people who haven’t been vaccinated to get the second generation,” he said.