Hong Kong medical workers launched a strike to pressure their government into closing the border with mainland China in a dramatic bid to slow the outbreak of the coronavirus.
“Closing the border entirely is the only effective way to prevent the spread of the virus,” Dr. Ho Pak-leung, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said during a Monday radio interview.
That medical analysis reinforced the demands of 2,700 hospital workers who began a strike on Monday, just as mainland authorities accused the United States of trying to sow “panic” about the virus to hurt China. Local officials gradually closed most crossings while resisting closing the border entirely, which would be difficult to enact after months of Hong Kong protests against Beijing’s authority over the former British colony.
“We have successfully forced the government to move forward,” said Winnie Yu Wai-ming, a senior member of Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority Employees Alliance. “But that is not enough. There are still three crossings and many mainlanders can continue coming to Hong Kong through there.”
The semi-autonomous city’s local medical union announced that 300 of the strikers are doctors and another 900 are nurses. Those figures are expected to balloon on Tuesday, as the employees alliance expects 9,000 union members to participate in the strike, if Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam continues to allow entry to Hong Kong from the mainland.
Lam maintained that the latest wave of border crossing closures were “completely irrelevant to the strike,” arguing that Hong Kong officials should not discriminate against people on the mainland.
“When it comes to infection control, when it comes to a virus, there is no boundary, so you cannot differentiate that people of a certain race, of a certain nationality … are more prone to infection than other people. We have to treat them equally,” Lam said on Monday.
The strike is doubly sensitive for the Chinese government due to the political controversy over Hong Kong and because it undercuts Beijing’s complaints about the U.S. warning against traveling to China during the outbreak.
[Related: China accuses US of sowing fear about deadly coronavirus]
“The U.S. government hasn’t provided any substantive assistance to us, but it was the first to evacuate personnel from its consulate in Wuhan, the first to suggest partial withdrawal of its embassy staff, and the first to impose a travel ban on Chinese travelers,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on Monday. “What it has done could only create and spread fear, which is a very bad example.”
And yet, Hong Kong’s top medical professionals implicitly echoed U.S. warnings about travel in China.
“Unless that person has a very good reason and must absolutely return to Hong Kong, then they need to be quarantined,” Ho, the Hong Kong doctor, added.
