Analysis: Is Hong Kong Following Singapore in Living With Covid-19?

The Hong Kong government has laid out a phased roadmap to lift most of the city’s social-distancing rules — to achieve a “new normal” within three months — that shares aspects of Singapore’s model of coexisting with Covid-19.

The two places are similarly sized, both in terms of space and population, and have both been hit hard by the highly transmissible omicron variant. But back in August, Singapore released a four-phase roadmap for co-existence with the virus, two months after it announced it would begin to significantly relax restrictions to revive its trade-reliant economy. The city-state then spent about nine months shifting away from strict Covid restrictions and finishing its “coexistence” transition.