'Open Up Booking-free Jabs To More People'

The head of a vaccination centre said on Thursday he hopes more people would be allowed to take advantage of a scheme offering Covid jabs without a booking.

Samuel Kwok, the medical director of the clinic at Kwun Chung Sports Centre in Jordan, said all 200 walk-in slots were filled on Wednesday, after the government dropped the eligible age from 70 to 60.

Speaking on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, he said this could offset a slight fall in the number of vaccine bookings in recent days.

"In our centre, our regular bookings have been coming down a little bit since last week," Kwok told RTHK's Janice Wong.

"The decrease number is about 10, 20 percent and in face if we have these walk-ins, and we use more of these walk-ins, it can actually make up this decrease in numbers and we can manage all these people."

Asked why the drop-in vaccines had proved so popular, Kwok said many older people were not comfortable in using computers to make a booking.

Queues formed outside many of the 24 centres offering walk-in vaccines on Wednesday, the first day people aged 60 to 69 were allowed to use the scheme.

Some 4,600 walk-in places are available between the centres every day.

A total of about 65,000 people received vaccinations on Wednesday.