Quote of the Day: Lo Chung-mau

The QR code scanning will continue, according to Dr Lo

Hong Kong's Secretary for Health Dr Lo Chung-mau insists that the Leave Home Safe app is still useful in the Covid-19 pandemic, even though Undersecretary for Health Libby Lee Ha-yun admitted the government rarely used the app to track contacts of Covid-19 patients.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has asked the Health Department to conduct a full review of the app, but Lo seems to think it's still effective, as he told reporters today:

"The Leave Home Safe" has a very important function as our anti-epidemic measures. It serves as a measure for our Centre for Health Protection [of the Department of Health] in contact tracing and also serves a function for individual citizens of Hong Kong to record places they have visited, so that they can take measures to protect themselves.

Lo says Leave Home Safe app is good

"With the evolution of the pandemic, there are changes in various ways: the virus has mutated, our vaccination rate has increased, our immunity barrier has strengthened, so we may have to adjust some of the functions of the "Leave Home Safe" app. 

"But I must emphasise that emerging infectious diseases are something we have to bear in mind: we had SARS before, we have various infectious diseases and now we have Covid-19 which is still evolving. So I would say that we may adjust the functions of the "Leave Home Safe" app, but I think the "Leave Home Safe" app is a very good app which has helped Hong Kong in the fight against the pandemic. 

"Perhaps in the future we may still need to rely on the "Leave Home Safe" to fight against the other emerging infectious diseases. It is still a very good app."

Lo seems hell bent on Hong Kong residents using the Leave Home Safe app forever, because there will be yet another infectious disease to track.

Henry not strongly recommending masking up

Meanwhile across the Pacific Ocean in British Columbia, parents are angry and terrified with the news that at least six children have died of complications of the flu this fall. In previous years the number was two to three.

In these recent cases, one child was under five years old, three between the ages of five and nine, and two teens who contracted secondary bacterial infections which complicated their flu symptoms.

The province's health officer Dr Bonnie Henry is not calling for a mask mandate, nor is she highly recommending that people wear masks especially in indoor settings. She has only advised that everyone get not only the flu shot but the Covid-19 booster as well.

One health official so lax, the other so stern.

Why can't we have a happy medium?