Hong Kong: The Healthcare Professions and the Outbreak

Abstract

This chapter studies Hong Kong’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Hong Kong’s experience with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 helped to prepare the health system for a pandemic, allowing it to avoid a complete lockdown of the city. Social-distancing measures, aggressive testing, and contact tracing have also been critical in controlling the local transmission of the disease. However, when historians and health policy researchers look back at the early days of the outbreak, they are likely to cite the impact of the five-day strike of healthcare professionals in February 2020 as a critical turning point in Hong Kong’s initially hesitant response. The chapter then focuses on this strike and the role of the healthcare profession in shaping public health policy. It argues that the striking healthcare professionals used their standing in Hong Kong to revive the city’s collective memory of the SARS outbreak, mobilizing public action, and possibly triggering a stronger public health intervention by the government.