Long lines form at pharmacies and crowds of panic-buyers strip supermarket shelves in Hong Kong as fears spread through the crowded territory over China’s new coronavirus epidemic.
As a territory that lost nearly 300 people to the SARS virus in 2003, Hong Kongers are taking few chances over the latest disease outbreak that began in central China and has since spread.
Usually clogged streets have been uncharacteristically quiet, with light traffic and crowds over the Lunar New Year holiday.
Photo: AFP
However, the one place Hong Kongers are still willing to gather in sizeable numbers is outside their local pharmacies, hoping to snap up rapidly diminishing supplies of surgical face masks.
In the middle-class district of Tseung Kwan O, hundreds of people yesterday patiently lined up for hours to buy masks at a pharmacy that, like many outlets, was now limiting sales to one box per person.
“No matter how long this queue takes and how much it costs, I will at least buy enough for myself,” a 26-year-old woman, who gave her surname as Tam, said.
Like many in the line, she was angry at local authorities.
“I’m not satisfied with what the government is doing to prevent the epidemic. It doesn’t close the border to mainlanders, and there is a lack of the supplies for masks in the market,” she added.
Hong Kong has resisted public pressure to close its border with the Chinese mainland, although it has shuttered some crossings.
A 17-year-old student, who gave her first name Michelle, said she had waited for more than an hour to get a box of masks.
“I hope this will be enough for a month. If I don’t have enough masks, I might need to stay at home and can’t go to school,” she said.
The South China Morning Post reported that some people camped out overnight after Watsons, one of the territory’s largest pharmacy chains, said a limited supply of face masks would be sold yesterday.
Angry customers argued with staff outside some stores when supplies ran out, the paper reported.
Supermarkets have also seen their shelves cleared in some districts.
“I bought a bag of rice and some canned food, too,” a 60-year-old retiree surnamed Sin said. “I am trying to avoid gathering with friends and reduce the amount of time to dine in at restaurants.”
Hong Kong’s government said it was “striving to procure more surgical masks to cope with the epidemic,” adding it had contacted 140 suppliers in 10 countries.
It added that the “supply of surgical masks in the market would still be tight in the near future.”
The territory’s Customs Department said it had also launched an operation to weed out counterfeit masks that did not comply with international safety standards.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung (袁國勇) has done battle with some of the world’s worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify, and he has a warning. Another pandemic is inevitable and could exact damage far worse than COVID-19 pandemic, said the soft-spoken scientist sometimes thought of as Hong Kong’s answer to former US National Institutes of Health director Anthony Fauci. “Both the public and [world] leaders must admit that another pandemic will come, and probably sooner than you anticipate,” he said at the city’s Queen Mary Hospital, where he works and teaches. “Why I make such a horrifying prediction
A high-ranking North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea in November last year — just months before Seoul and Havana established diplomatic ties, the South Korean National Intelligence Service said yesterday. North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu had been responsible for political affairs at Pyongyang’s embassy in Cuba since 2019, tasked specifically “with obstructing the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba,” South Korea’s Chosun Daily reported. Ri defected to South Korea with his wife and children in early November, making him the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat known to have defected since then-North Korean deputy ambassador to the
INDICTED: US prosecutors said Sue Mi Terry accepted fancy handbags, luxury dinners and thousands of dollars in payments from South Korean intelligence A former CIA employee and senior official at the US National Security Council has been charged with allegedly serving as a secret agent for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, the US Department of Justice said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating access for South Korean officials to US government officials, an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan, New York, says. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source