Mainland Chinese Visit Hong Kong For COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine

JAKARTA - Dozens of mainland Chinese travelers rushed to Hong Kong to get their hands on an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, which is not available on the mainland, as a wave of infections sweeps across China following the lifting of the zero-COVID policy.

A private hospital in China's special administrative region of Hong Kong welcomed the first batch of mainland customers on Thursday, just five days after China reopened its borders for the first time in three years, allowing quarantine-free travel.

Yoyo Liang, a 36-year-old Beijing resident, was one of the first customers at Virtus Medical Center, where he paid Hong Kong dollars 1,888 for his first BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Liang has received three doses of the domestically developed vaccine from China's Sinovac over the past two years, but said he was using the Pfizer-BioNtech bivalent booster vaccine, to better protect himself from the virus.

"I really want to get a vaccine because borders are reopening. There are no bivalent vaccines available in mainland China," he explained after the vaccination, as reported by Reuters on Jan 12.

Virtus, which has received more than 300 inquiries about the vaccine so far, expects more mainland customers to come to Hong Kong in the coming weeks and months, the company's chief medical officer Samuel Kwok told reporters.

However, because many people are already infected, many wait before taking booster shots, he continued.

"Demand is increasing but we understand that there are a lot of people infected recently... they can't get immediately... a booster dose so they will have to wait at least three months," he explained.

China, home to 1.4 billion people, abruptly lifted its zero-COVID policy last month, causing infections to spike across a population with little immunity, having been protected since the virus emerged three years ago in the Chinese city of Wuhan.