Covid comes back to haunt Hong Kong - latest updates

 

Covid-19 has infected more than 434M people and killed over 5.9M worldwide. Here are some of the latest coronavirus-related developments:

Hong Kong residents expressed growing frustration after new, tighter coronavirus restrictions went into effect, imposed by city leaders in line with Beijing's zero-Covid policy. (AP)

Covid comes back to haunt Hong Kong

For two years, Hong Kong successfully insulated most of its residents from Covid-19 and often went months without a single locally spread case. Then the Omicron variant showed up.

The fast-spreading mutation breached Hong Kong’s defences and has been spreading rapidly through one of the world’s most densely populated places, overflowing hospitals and isolation wards and prompting measures to test the entire 7.4 million population and hastily build six isolation and treatment centers.

The surge shows what happens when Covid-19 strikes a population unprotected by immunity from previous infections, and has exposed a low vaccination rate among elderly citizens who are bearing the brunt of the crisis.

Only about 30 percent of Hong Kong residents over the age of 80 and around 58 percent of those in their 70s are fully vaccinated, lagging younger populations by a large margin. This is despite the fact that vaccines have been widely available in Hong Kong since early 2021.

The city has reported about 150 deaths in the past three days, many among the unvaccinated elderly.

Health authorities said that the vaccine reluctance among the elderly is an unfortunate side-effect of Hong Kong’s success in warding off the virus for months.

Hong Kong, by comparison, on Saturday reported more than 17,000 new cases in the latest 24-hour period and 66 deaths.

China sees surge in pandemic

China reported 239 new confirmed coronavirus cases on February 26, the country's national health authority said on Sunday, down from 249 a day earlier.

Of the new cases, 112 were locally transmitted, the National Health Commission said, up from 93 a day earlier.

Most of the new local cases were reported by regions including Guangdong, Inner Mongolia and Guangxi, while the capital Beijing reported two.

The number of new asymptomatic cases, which China does not classify as confirmed cases, stood at 100, compared with 118 a day earlier.

There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,636. As of February 26, mainland China had confirmed 109,092 cases.

Brazil's death toll tops 750

Brazil on Saturday reported 753 new Covid-19 deaths and 73,808 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said, with a few states now yet filing daily data.

Nearly 650,000 people have died from the virus in Brazil, with more 28.7 million recorded cases, Health Ministry data show. 

Source: TRTWorld and agencies 

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(With input from news agency language)

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