Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong says COVID updates continue to look good but there are significant factors to look out for.
“There is a XXB variant and another of the Omicron variant that are undermining our vaccination protections,” he said recently.
“Because of that it looks like I will have to still maintain our visiting hours’ restriction and the protection programs that we have for critically ill people.
“Apparently this particular variant has a bad effect on people who require ICU care – so they might come in for diabetes or heart attack in ICU and if they contract the variant, it goes badly for them – so we still have to protect a lot of our critical care people.”
Dr Fong added vaccination programs related to COVID should be instilled into normal routine vaccination plans.
“We are trying to revamp all our other vaccination programs and we want to do it in such a way that all vaccination efforts are intergraded into one normal function.
“So when we do outreach – I know there is one team that’s out in the Lau Group right now and they are going through all the schools, they are doing measles and all the various vaccination programs together with COVID-19.
“That is the way we want to see our vaccinations program for children run.”
