Coronavirus: 2.5 million Hongkongers infected, daily caseload expected to dip under 1,000 in coming weeks – top government adviser
- HKU’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung urges residents to get vaccinated and brace for future waves as ‘eradication of the virus will not happen’
- He also suggests city could consider easing travel restrictions, with imported cases far below that in the community
About 2.5 million Hongkongers may have already been infected with Covid-19, with the daily caseload likely to drop to fewer than 1,000 in the coming weeks, a top government adviser has said.
Professor Yuen Kwok-yung from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) also suggested on Sunday that the city could consider easing travel restrictions, with community cases outstripping imported ones.
He warned that “eradication of the virus will not happen”, urging residents to get vaccinated to brace for future waves of infections.
Based on Covid-19 numbers among staff of the Hospital Authority and civil service, Yuen estimated at least one in five people in the city had caught the virus.
“Overall there could be 1.5 million to 4 million people infected. I estimate that the figure could be around 2.5 million,” he told a radio programme.
Yuen added that the number of confirmed cases next week could fall back to about 10,000, and this could drop further to under 1,000 if residents “do not let their guard down”.
A team of HKU academics previously estimated that the fifth wave had peaked on March 4 and the actual number of infections stood at some 3.6 million by March 14, with daily cases expected to fall below 1,000 by the end of April and under 100 by the end of May.
