A Total Of 7.5 Million Hong Kong Residents Get Mass Vaccinated In January

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JAKARTA - As many as 7.5 million Hong Kong residents will be injected with the COVID-19 vaccine en masse in January 2021.

As reported by Antara, Saturday, December 12, Hong Kong will receive the first batch of vaccine shipments in early January 2021, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam told the press, Friday, December 11.

According to the woman head of the city government, the vaccine will be given free of charge to all citizens.

The population of Hong Kong is recorded at around 7.5 million people, however HKSAR buys twice as many vaccines as the population, so that there will be 15 million doses.

Lam claimed to have reached purchase agreements with the two vaccine manufacturers but did not name the two companies.

A total of 7.5 million doses of vaccine will arrive in early January, with the rest expected in the first quarter of next year.

HSAR will make optimal preparations, including listing vaccines and determining the priority scale of their use for health workers, elderly people and people suffering from chronic diseases, Lam said.

In the past two weeks, there has been a massive exodus of Hong Kong residents to mainland China via Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, since schools were closed due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases.

As of Thursday, December 10, the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in Hong Kong had reached 7,292.