JOHN Hone from the bottom of the High Road in Letterkenny has been living in Hong Kong since 1998. He had planned to go home for Easter but that has now been postponed to the summer.
The Covid 19 crisis started in January and followed over six months of street protests against the government and police force in Hong Kong.
Mr Hone was a teacher in a public school until 2016. He now works for the Hong Kong Government Education Bureau in teacher support and training.
“The progress of the virus has not been as dramatic as it seems to have become at home. Authorities acted quickly in closing schools and cancelling all public events in January. Even before that, news had been reaching Hong Kong that a new form of respiratory infection had been surfacing in Central China,” he said.
“Hong Kong people have muscle memory since the SARS outbreak in 2003 and were taking precautions in early January even before the government acted. There has been no lock down here and you can still see many people working and going out although 99.9 per cent of the population wear masks in public places and all shops, restaurants and buildings have temperature checks and hand sanitising measures on entry,” he added.
The number of cases remained very low until about three weeks ago when many Hong Kong students started fleeing countries like the US and the UK.
Numbers are still comparatively low – 915 confirmed cases earlier this week with four deaths in a population of about 7.5 million living in very crowded conditions. Keeping in mind that those 7.5 million people live in 1,106 square kilometres (Donegal has an area of 4,861 square kilometres) it’s been pretty impressive so far.
“The numbers seem to have been kept low in places like Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong because they acted early and had previous experience of pandemics. Masks also seem to have been a factor because even in normal times here when people have colds or flu’s, people wear masks to protect those around them from their symptoms such as coughing and sneezing. It’s seen as a community protection thing whereas in the west it seems to be seen as a way of protecting yourself and not others.
“This second wave is causing concern and the government have banned gatherings of more than four people in public and closed all bars and pubs although restaurants and shops remain open. After the initial toilet paper hysteria in February all shops are well stocked with everything,” he said.
Travel within Hong Kong is still relatively normal but all arriving passengers are tested and have to subject themselves to 14 days quarantine.
“This is enforced by arrivals having to wear a tracking bracelet which is synced to a tracking app on their phones,” he said.
“It’s impossible to make plans for the future and the present isn’t a very nice place to be at the moment. I’ve dealt with this by getting out into the countryside here. Escaping from urban areas and tiny flats is essential for ones sanity and there are many beautiful islands and coastal hikes where you can get away from it all.
“My wife and daughter seem to be coping quite well being at home all the time. My daughter hasn’t had school since January but her teachers seem to be keeping her busy on Google classroom and Zoom. We would usually have gone abroad for Chinese New Year and Easter holidays but this year it has been impossible so I decided to explore the less visited and harder to get to places here.
“The optimist in me says that we’ll all come out of this wiser people and know ourselves and those close to us better ….that’s gotta be a good thing, hasn’t it?” he added.
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