Letters | Hong Kong government, not Cathay Pacific, responsible for city’s Covid-19 fight
- Readers discuss Hong Kong’s efforts to prevent a fifth wave, Carrie Lam’s treatment of Cathay Pacific, the need for more vaccination centres, and why the health code should be integrated with the iAM Smart app
The government seems to have put too much faith in Cathay Pacific to ensure its aircrew follow quarantine rules. Those rules required crew to isolate at home for three days. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor summoned Cathay’s chairman and CEO and expressed the government’s dissatisfaction with the staff’s breaches of the isolation rule.
I can imagine Lam’s despair at this failure of the virus prevention strategy at a time when reopening of the border with the mainland appeared imminent. However, she should realise that while Cathay Pacific is required to follow the rules, the government is responsible for the well-being of 7 million Hong Kong residents.
Hong Kong’s laissez-faire style of governance allowed it to achieve the status of “Asia’s World City” in the past two decades, but the government cannot stand on the sidelines when infection control is the need of the hour.
Finally, I would like to praise Hong Kong residents for doing their duty by complying with compulsory testing and quarantine orders, even during the end-of-year holidays, including those who do not support the current government.
Liao Sizhe, Sha Tin
Lam in no position to blame Cathay Pacific
It is unacceptable that Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor chastised Cathay Pacific chairman Patrick Healy and CEO Augustus Tang Kin-wing, summoning them to her office to express her government’s “strong dissatisfaction” and stating that there is no excuse for management not to be blamed for the actions of their staff.
She then absolved herself of blame over similar behaviour from her own ministers, stating she would not take responsibility for their personal wrongdoing. This reeks of hypocrisy.
Humiliation is neither warranted nor justified from a chief executive quick to apportion blame to others and slow to accept she, as head of the government, should publicly apologise for the actions of her ministers.
Mark Peaker, The Peak
Increase vaccination centres to stop fifth wave
The Hong Kong government is going to extreme lengths and taking extraordinary measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Huge sums of money are spent on testing and retesting the populace and locking them down as and when necessary, despite the fact that a good chunk of the population has not even taken the two doses required to be fully vaccinated, leave alone the booster dose.
I wanted to obtain boosters for my family, but all government vaccination centres except those far from where I live showed up as full until January 21. The earliest appointment available at the handful of private vaccination centres that I checked was in February.
In the face of this and an impending fifth wave, why can’t the government increase the number of public and private vaccination centres? In many countries in the West, vaccines are delivered by health care personnel in pharmacies and health centres. We should follow suit and make vaccines more freely available to increase uptake and avoid further closures and lockdowns, which we are all fed up with.
Lakshman Samaranayake, Pok Fu Lam
Integrate iAM Smart to improve health code
Although iAM Smart can verify users’ identities and save them the trouble of filling in the form, it cannot provide the proof of address one is asked for when applying for the health code. We urge the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer to upgrade iAM Smart so it can verify users’ residential addresses with banks and utility companies that are already connected to the platform.
The current health code system only allows registrants to reset forgotten passwords through SMS. Integration with iAM Smart will remove the hassle of password management and serve the community more efficiently.
Juanjuan Li and Huiya Shi, Kowloon Tong