Dozens of travelers from mainland China are rushing to Hong Kong to receive the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, which are not available in mainland China, as the country grapples with a torrent of infections that have overwhelmed its health system.
A private hospital in China’s Hong Kong special administrative region welcomed the first batch of clients from the mainland on Thursday, just 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 Center, where she paid HK$1,888 ($241) for her first BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
Liang had received three doses of domestically-developed vaccines from China’s Sinovac in the past two years, but said he took Pfizer-BioTech’s bivalent booster shot 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,” he explained after receiving the injection from him.
Virtus, which has received more than 300 inquiries about the vaccines so far, expects more mainland clients to come to Hong Kong in the coming weeks and months, the company’s chief medical officer Samuel Kwok told reporters.
However, due to the large number of people already infected, many would wait before receiving a booster shot, he said.
“Demand is increasing, but we understand that there are many people who were recently infected…cannot get…a booster dose right away, so they 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 a population with little immunity after being shielded since the virus emerged three years ago in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
