Chinese travelers going to Hong Kong for mRNA Covid vaccine: report

Hong Kong:

Reuters reported that hundreds of millions of mainland Chinese travelers are going to Hong Kong to receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which are not available on the Chinese mainland, as the country battles a torrent of infections that has overwhelmed its health system Is.

A private hospital in the Special Chinese Administrative Region of Hong Kong welcomed its first batch of mainland clients on Thursday, five days after China reopened its borders for the first time in three years, allowing quarantine-free travel.

Yoyo Liang, a 36-year-old Beijing resident, was one of the first customers at Virtus Medical Centre, where she paid HK$1,888 ($241) for her first BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Liang had received three domestically developed vaccine doses from China’s Sinovac over the past two years, but said he took Pfizer-BioNTech’s bivalent booster vaccine to better protect himself against the virus.

“I was very tempted to get the vaccine because of the reopening of the border. There is no bivalent vaccine available in mainland Chin,” she explained after receiving her vaccine.

Samuel Kwok, the company’s chief medical officer, told reporters that Virtus, which has so far received more than 300 inquiries about vaccines, is expecting mainland customers to arrive in Hong Kong in the coming weeks and months.

However, because of the large number of people infected, many will wait before getting a booster shot, he said.

“Demand is increasing but we understand there are many people who have been infected recently…they cannot get a booster dose straight away so they will have to wait at least three months.”

China, home to 1.4 billion people, abruptly abandoned its zero-covid policy last month and infections are rising in populations with low immunity after the virus emerged three years ago in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)