While people are struggling to get their jab of COVID-19, Hong Kong is a place where the government could throw away the vast stores of the coronavirus vaccines. People in Hong Kong are reluctant on having the vaccine and so far only 20 percent of the population has been vaccinated. Currently the territory has nearly two million shots of Pfizer which will be out of date in three months. Hong Kong has enough doses to vaccinate its entire population.
People are reluctant in taking the vaccine due to low number of infections and also lack of trust in the government. An official from the government of Hong Kong has warned that there is only a three month window for the population here and then the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be out of date and will no longer be useful. Thomas Tsang, the former controller for Centre for Health Protection has said that once the vaccines have expired they can no longer be used and even the community vaccination centers that have been set up by the vaccine companies will be winding up their operations in the month of September, 2021.
Tsang added that it is not good that Hong Kong has a huge stock of the vaccines while people across the world are struggling to get them. The population of Hong Kong is 7.5 million and the government had purchased 7.5 million doses each of Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac from China. But so far only 14 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. Apart from the population, even the medical sector has not been consistent in getting their jabs. Hospital authorities have revealed that only one third of the medical staff has been vaccinated.
Some of the local politicians in Hong Kong have suggested that they could export the unused vaccines to the countries that need them of the take up does not improve soon.
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