The Chinese elimination strategy attracted attention ahead of the ongoing Olympic Games.

Several multimillion-dollar cities were placed under very strict restrictions when the Chinese government tried to prevent corona outbreaks.

In Hong Kong, authorities have tried to keep the number of cases to zero.

But the city is now experiencing its biggest covid eruption to date.

On Friday, 95 percent of the city's care places were occupied.

In Sham Shui Po District, the hospital is overcrowded and a number of patients are being cared for in makeshift tents and on the street outside the hospital.

This is also because the city decided at an early stage that everyone who tested positive would be admitted to hospital.

However, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam sticks to the "zero covid" strategy.

- We can not capitulate to the virus, Lam has previously said, according to the news agency Reuters.

"Not possible in the long run"

Until last winter, Joakim Dillner, professor of infection epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, believed that an elimination strategy was possible to maintain.

But the infectious nature of the omicron and the fact that the vaccines protect less against the infection have made him change.

Elimination is no longer sustainable in the long term with the changed conditions, Dillner now believes.

- The game plan can change again - what would change the odds would be if new vaccines emerged that also protect against omicron infection.

Then it suddenly becomes realistic again.

But without high immunity and vaccination that protects against omicron infection, it is not possible in the long run.

Crisis in island nations

Several distant Pacific nations have also had limited transmission in the past, largely due to their isolated location.

When the omicron infection is now rampant, isolation leads to problems, as it is difficult to reach with help from the countries' limited healthcare systems.

Among other things, the Solomon Islands has built several field hospitals to handle disease cases.

The spread worries the Red Cross delegation of the Red Cross.

"We have already seen in Fiji and Papua New Guinea how this ruthless virus overwhelms hospitals and healthcare facilities," said its chief Katie Greenwood in a statement, according to TT.

See how patients are cared for on the streets of Hong Kong in the clip above.