HONG KONG – Hong Kong may soon have to throw away millions of coronavirus vaccine doses as they are approaching their expiry date and not enough people have signed up for the shots, warned an official today.
Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world fortunate enough to have secured more than enough doses to inoculate its entire population of 7.5 million people.
But swirling distrust of the government as it stamps out dissent – combined with online misinformation and lack of urgency in the comparatively virus-free city – has led to entrenched vaccine hesitancy and dismal inoculation drive.
A member of the government’s vaccine task force today warned that Hong Kongers “only have a three-month window” before the city’s first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine go out of date.
“The vaccine has an expiry date,” Thomas Tsang, a former Centre for Health Protection controller, told RTHK radio.
“They cannot be used after the expiry date, and the community vaccination centres for Pfizer will, according to present plans, cease operating after September.
“The whole world is scrambling for vaccines, and it is not right that we can buy a vaccine overnight and we just have it. What we have is probably all we have for the rest of the year.”
Hong Kong bought 7.5 million doses each of the Pfizer and Sinovac vaccines – the latter from China has yet to be approved by the World Health Organisation but is fast-tracked for use by city health regulators.
It also pre-ordered 7.5 million doses of AstraZeneca shots but scrapped that deal earlier this year, with authorities saying they planned to use the money for second-generation vaccines next year.
So far, just 19% of the population has received the first dose of either vaccine, while 14% received two doses.
Hesitancy is common even among the city’s medical workers. Earlier this month, its Hospital Authority revealed only a third of its staff had taken the opportunity to be vaccinated.
There are currently millions of unused Pfizer shots, which must be stored at ultra-low temperatures and have a six-month shelf life.
A total of 3,263,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been shipped to Hong Kong, so far, but only 1,231,600 have been administered.
Hong Kong’s vaccine hesitancy comes as many nearby countries are scrambling to secure enough doses as the coronavirus wreaks havoc.
In recent weeks, some politicians have suggested the city could look to send the unused vaccine overseas if take-up does not improve.
Public trust in the government has been at a historic low since Beijing and local authorities cracked down on dissent to end huge and often violent democracy protests that broke out in 2019. – AFP, May 25, 2021
