Hong Kong is intensifying its Covid Zero approach, adding new layers of restrictions on top of what are already some of the strictest pandemic curbs in the world. And it’s all over fewer than 50 infections detected across the past two weeks.
Primary schools are closed, some flights have been shut down. Restaurants can’t serve diners in person after 6 p.m., and bars, beaches, beauty shops and gyms are shuttered entirely.
Many people in the once-vibrant Asian financial hub aren’t afraid of the pathogen itself. That’s particularly true for the fully vaccinated with a booster shot, as evidence shows their risk of contracting severe disease is low. The currently circulating omicron variant also appears to be less dangerous for those who have been immunized, even if it’s still highly contagious.
What people are afraid of is getting caught in the government’s dragnet and being shipped off to a city-run quarantine camp that’s known for its lack of WiFi and barge-like environment. The place itself, known as Penny’s Bay, was built out of prefabricated components that look like cargo containers. It took less than 24 hours in the camp for one lawmaker, potentially exposed to the virus while attending a birthday party for a member of city’s business elite, to call foul, criticizing the way the government’s health officials are handling the virus.
 Closed bars due to Covid-19 restrictions in the Lan Kwai Fong nightlife area in Hong Kong, China.
Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
Among the tales of chaos pouring out of Penny’s Bay are hours without electricity or mobile-phone reception, no food for an entire day, and being unable to leave because of missing documents—showing how Hong Kong struggles to house, feed and process some 3,000 people it has forcibly isolated.
Even worse is the hospital where those who have tested positive are sent. Many of these people wouldn’t qualify as having Covid-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, because they have no symptoms. But isolating them all, often crowded together in rooms of half-a-dozen strangers, is intended to sequester them from the rest of the community, rather than hasten their recovery.
It’s no wonder that the harsh conditions make locals less likely to voluntarily disclose when they may have been exposed, much like the way recalcitrant teenagers keep secrets from their parents.
Several guests who attended the controversial birthday party didn’t use the city’s LeaveHomeSafe app, a voluntary contract-tracing system intended to help identify those at risk. A woman who spent the day of the birthday party with the guest who later turned out to be infected wasn’t on the formal invitation list. She didn’t disclose that she dropped in with her friend and didn’t go to quarantine with everyone else. Days later she, too, turned up positive. It wasn’t because she was sick. She was ordered to get tested because of exposure.
There isn’t much that residents of Hong Kong can do in the face of the rising restrictions, other than leave. And thousands of Hong Kongers are hitting the exits. The city lost nearly 90,000 residents in the 12 months that ended in June, and the number is expected to increase in the months ahead as the reality of what it takes to maintain a Covid Zero policy crystalizes.
For now, Hong Kong is enduring the pain of eradicating the virus, without the benefit of living virus-free. And the tiny island with more than 7 million inhabitants is following China’s policies, without the benefit of open borders or access to China’s economic, social and travel amenities. How long the situation will last is anyone’s guess.—Michelle Fay Cortez
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