The Diocese of Macau announced that it will be holding special prayers for Hong Kong that is battling a surge in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.
Bishop Stephen Lee Bun-sang announced that from March 11 to 19, a prayer released by Pope Francis would be recited in all parishes after public Masses, with the special prayer intention “for our brothers and sisters in neighboring Hong Kong in the midst of the worsening epidemic.”
On Wednesday, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam announced that mandatory coronavirus testing was no longer a priority after plans for mass screening of all 7.4 million residents and an accompanying citywide lockdown triggered panic.
Thousands of foreign and Hong Kong residents have earlier fled the city, as the United States issued a travel advisory warning against visiting and cited the risk of children being separated from parents in COVID isolation units.
Despite two years of hard-won breathing room thanks to following the mainland’s zero-COVID strategy, Hong Kong is now the throes of its worst-ever coronavirus outbreak fuelled by the extremely contagious Omicron variant.
It has recorded more than half a million cases since the Omicron-fueled fifth wave kicked off in 2022, exponentially outstripping the total number of 12,000 infections the city saw in the pandemic’s first two years.
It also now has one of the world’s highest fatality rates in the developed world, the majority of deaths among its vaccine-hesitant elderly.
Elderly care homes have been particularly hard-hit, as staff are downed with the virus, and COVID-positive patients are pushed away from overcrowded hospital wards.
Lam said Wednesday that care home residents across Hong Kong would receive at least one COVID jab by March 18.
So far, government data shows that fewer than 60 percent of people aged 70-79 and only 32 percent of the above-80s have received two jabs.
A University of Hong Kong survey estimated that about 1.8 million residents have been infected so far, about one in four of the population. – with a report from Agence France Presse
