How Hong Kong went from Zero Covid success story to the world’s worst Omicron wave

For a long time, Hong Kong was held up as one of the great success stories of Covid. When the pandemic started, it shut down: it closed its borders. For eight whole months, there was not a single case of Covid-19 detected within it. And life for Hong Kongers was relatively normal, at least from a public health perspective. Restaurants were open, schools were open. There were no lockdowns, no bans on household mixing. Meanwhile, in the UK, tens of thousands were dying; our children were barred from schools; I spent my 40th birthday drinking cans with one friend on a park bench, because larger gatherings were banned. Life was not normal. But now, Hong Kong is living through a disaster. At the absolute peak of Britain’s second wave, about 18 people in every million were dying from Covid a day, and our health service was creaking under the strain. On 13 March, in Hong Kong, nearly 38 people out of every million died.