Hong Kong expands access to Western, Chinese Covid medicines

[HONG KONG] Hong Kong will distribute oral Covid-19 drugs to doctors and expand the use of traditional Chinese medicine to treat the disease as a deadly wave of omicron infections continues to recede.

Private doctors will be provided with Pfizer's Paxlovid and Merck's Molnupiravir and encouraged to prescribe them to high-risk patients at no cost, the city's government said in a statement. The drugs have already been given to more than 22,000 patients in facilities such as hospitals and care homes, it added.

Hong Kong reported 3,709 new coronavirus cases and 111 deaths on Sunday (Apr 3). That was the lowest number of daily cases recorded since Feb 15, data from Johns Hopkins University showed. The financial hub has been hit hard by the outbreak which began late January and has killed around 8,000 people so far.

Hong Kong's top official Carrie Lam said at a briefing on Sunday that the city would make it easier for coronavirus patients to obtain traditional Chinese remedies. There are "obstacles in the law" to the wider use of such medicines, an issue which will need to be "solved", she added.

After the city's retail sales were hit by the wave of infections, the government will distribute consumption vouchers to around 6.3 million people from Apr 7, Finance Minister Paul Chan said in an online statement. The vouchers will be worth HK$5,000 (S$866). BLOOMBERG