City Beat | Don’t put cart before horse with incentives to boost vaccination; what Hong Kong needs is a definite timeline for ultimate goal of herd immunity
- Cautious approach to getting second jab is understandable in these uncertain times
- But race to get people inoculated is really a race to economic recovery
Those who are worried by the sudden interruption of the BioNTech vaccine roll-out because of packaging defects may continue to wait and see a little longer.
The good news is that an investigation by the manufacturer and its mainland Chinese distributor has found no systemic problem in the entire supply chain, and the vaccines already supplied to Hong Kong have been judged to be safe, which means the roll-out may resume within this week.
The bad news is that authorities are still facing an uphill battle to get most of the population vaccinated amid a low take-up rate, first affected by lingering suspicion about the Sinovac vaccine and now suffering a further blow from the BioNTech suspension.
Hopefully, science and sensible judgment should prevail at this time of confusion.
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Hong Kong suspends BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines ‘as precaution’ over defective packaging
Realistically, none of the available vaccines worldwide, Chinese or Western made, is 100 per cent free of side-effects, nor do they guarantee 100 per cent immunisation from Covid-19.
