The financial center, renowned for its efficiency, is now under fire from critics.

Many Hong Kongers criticize the government for its inability to anticipate the current crisis despite the two years of respite it has enjoyed thanks to its "zero Covid" strategy, painful for the economy but crowned with success in terms of health.

Other countries that have followed the "zero Covid" strategy, such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, have now decided to live with the virus.

But China remains determined to eradicate all cases and has ordered Hong Kong to do the same.

Patients with Covid-19 wait outside the entrance to the saturated Caritas Health Center on March 1, 2022 in Hong Kong Peter PARKS AFP

The city is preparing to test its 7.4 million inhabitants in March and isolate each infected person, including in prefabricated camps being built with the help of China.

For the past few weeks, morgues have been full, medical staff and ambulances are lacking, and many patients are parked in camps and separated from their loved ones.

The United States formally advised against all travel to Hong Kong on Wednesday, citing cases of young children torn from their parents to be placed in solitary confinement after testing positive for Covid-19.

Emily, a 40-year-old mother, is sure her family has been infected when she waited in line for hours for two sets of mandatory tests last month after a Covid case was discovered in her building.

Residents line up at a Covid-19 test center on March 2, 2022 in Hong Kong DALE DE LA REY AFP

The results took ten days to arrive.

All negative except for the youngest child.

But in the meantime, the whole family started showing symptoms.

"Traumatizing"

"I never thought I would hurt my dearest loved ones when I was just trying to cooperate with the government," Emily told AFP.

"It's traumatic."

More than 220,000 contaminations have been recorded in Hong Kong over the past two months, against only 12,000 since the start of the pandemic except for this period.

Empty shelves in a supermarket after reports of possible containment, March 1, 2022 in Hong Kong Peter PARKS AFP

The date of the massive screening operation remains to be determined, as does the fate of those who test positive.

In the coming weeks, nearly 70,000 places of isolation must be created for cases with few or no symptoms, in requisitioned hotels, social housing or camps built with the help of Beijing.

But this figure barely covers two days of new infections, according to current statistics.

The hypothesis of confinement, initially dismissed by the chief executive Carrie Lam, has been mentioned in recent days, which has caused a wave of panic in the city, which has seen its supermarkets robbed.

Few details have been released on what authorities plan to do with the tens or even hundreds of thousands of positive cases after screening the entire population.

"If we don't have a plan on how to quarantine confirmed cases, then mass testing will be of no use," pandemic adviser Ivan Hung told reporters this week. .

An isolation center for people infected with Covid-19 being finished, February 28, 2022 in Hong Kong Peter PARKS AFP

For Mr. Hung, the authorities should rather devote their energy to raising the rate of vaccination, for the moment dangerously low, among the elderly.

quarantine camps

Residents of the quarantine camps describe grim, spartan and chaotic conditions.

Last week, several people interned in the gigantic Penny's Bay camp, next to Hong Kong's Disneyland, accused the authorities of leaving them locked up several days after the expiry of their mandatory isolation period.

Samuel Ho, a computer scientist who wishes to use a pseudonym, says he received no instructions for his first two days, and his only contact with the outside world was the cold meals placed outside his cabin at Penny's. Bay.

A room in an isolation center being built in Hong Kong, February 28, 2022 Peter PARKS AFP

His calls to the government hotline often went unanswered.

"It was very chaotic, very scary and it could easily make us lose our minds," he says.

"All the measures taken by the government have made Hong Kong an unlivable place," said Ho.

Cyan, 25, was interned in another camp last month with her grandmother and younger sister.

“It all seems unreasonable and meaningless to me,” she says, adding that they could have isolated themselves at home.

"I'm wasting public resources that others, who are more in need, don't have access to."

© 2022 AFP