Hong Kong’s health secretary says she is confident that all residents will receive Covid vaccines by the end of 2021.
The city has signed agreements to get more than adequate doses for the population, Hong Kong’s Food and Health Minister Sophia Chan told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Tuesday.
In response to a question about when Hong Kong could achieve herd immunity, Chan said authorities are still surveying the response to vaccinations and are also looking into the delivery schedule. She didn’t provide a timeline for when the city could hit herd immunity, a situation where enough people in the population have become immune to a disease so that it effectively stops spreading rampant.
“We’re pretty sure that by the end of the year … everyone in Hong Kong will have a chance to get (their) vaccination,” she said.
Chan added that more than 22 million doses of Covid vaccines have already been ordered.
Hong Kong has a population of approximately 7.5 million and began rolling out its vaccination program in late February. It has entered into agreements to purchase vaccines from China’s Sinovac Biotech, Europe’s Oxford-AstraZeneca, as well as one supplied by Shanghai-based Fosun Pharma and its partner, German drug manufacturer BioNTech.
Customers buy fresh vegetables from a street market shop in Hong Kong on March 8, 2021.
Anthony Wallace | AFP | Getty images
Chan said people seem “pretty excited” about being vaccinated so far, but acknowledges that they are still rolling it out in stages and it’s not yet available to the entire population.
She also said experts are reviewing the reasons behind adverse events, including at least two post-vaccination deaths.
“Our scientific committee has initially provided the information that it has nothing to do with the vaccination. That is, they don’t find any direct causality with the vaccination,” she said.
Regardless, Chan weighed in on when Hong Kong would relax its coronavirus restrictions, saying the city’s authorities will be “very careful” to do so.
She said the situation remains “a little unstable” as unlinked cases are still being reported, despite few new cases.
“We really want to control and cut the transmission chains in a community because we don’t want clusters to come out,” she said.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong reported 21 new cases, bringing the total number of infections to at least 11,121, according to the health authority there.