'Govt United On Covid Measures Despite Media Reports'

Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau on Sunday stressed that the government is united in its fight against Covid-19 as he slammed the media for giving people the false impression that the administration is split on its anti-epidemic measures.

In a blog post on Sunday, Lo criticised an article citing unnamed sources as saying that Chief Executive John Lee wanted to scrap existing hotel quarantine arrangements for incoming travellers in November, despite the objections of some officials, including Lo himself.

The health chief did not name the agency, saying only that the article was published by a foreign media organisation. Bloomberg had published a story on the alleged rift within the Lee administration over quarantine measures on Thursday.

Lo noted that the article claimed to have ‘insider information’, but only cited "the people" and "the person" as its sources.

"Whether the insider information is true seems to be unimportant. Local media then widely copied the report as if it is real," he wrote.

He said such reports had misled the public into thinking there were internal disagreements within the administration.

“The price is not merely the professionalism of the media industry, it could even affect the SAR government’s anti-epidemic measures,” he wrote.

Lo clarified that the administration had always had a common goal in tackling the pandemic – to minimise deaths and serious cases while protecting the vulnerable and the overall medical system – in taking targeted measures to control the spread of Covid-19 while allowing normal activities to resume as much as possible.

Executive Councillor Ko Wing-man also told reporters the city is in no position to scrap quarantine measures for incoming travellers or infected individuals for the time being, as the current Covid wave hasn’t peaked yet.

“We do not see that there’s a definite conclusion for the wave to reach its peak within this month,” Ko told reporters.

“Of course everybody wishes that it could, but there is yet further need to analyse the data and to see the trend in the next one or two weeks before we can say clearly whether the wave is going to peak within this month,” he added.

Ko said people shouldn’t let their guard down and treat the virus like a common flu, warning that the community would pay a high price by doing so.

The former health minister also told a radio programme that authorities are looking at ways to make the vaccine pass more user-friendly for children who don't have smartphones.

The government has said it’s set to extend the programme to people as young as five – barring them from entering specific venues such as restaurants unless they can prove they have been vaccinated.

Ko said kids without phones can present paper records, and the authorities are always open to alternatives.

“If we say there are many children who don’t have their own mobile phone and therefore electronic vaccine pass is not feasible, then they can carry a paper form vaccine pass,” he said.

“And if we think that the paper form vaccine pass is too clumsy, we can think of a more convenient version of the paper vaccine pass."

“But we must all realise that the ultimate objective of the vaccine pass is to protect our children,” he stressed.