The latest from HKFP on the battle against the coronavirus pandemic in Hong Kong.
LATEST NEWS & VIEWS
Suspected student suicides reach 10-year high as Hong Kong gov’t receives 31 reports in first 11 months of 2023
The number of suspected student suicides in Hong Kong has reached a 10-year high, with the Education Bureau receiving 31 reports in the first 11 months of 2023. The figure came as local health authorities revealed that more than 1,800 Hongkongers under the age of 18 had been diagnosed with depression at public healthcare facilities…
Hong Kong students’ performance drops in global study amid general decline over Covid-19 pandemic
Hong Kong secondary school students’ performance in maths and reading has fallen in a global assessment amid a general decline internationally over the Covid-19 pandemic. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global study that evaluates the maths, science, and the mother-tongue reading literacy of 15-year-old students, found that the maths and reading scores…
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COVID-19 FEATURES
Hong Kong Policy Address: What might be among this year’s measures?
Ahead of Chief Executive John Lee’s second Policy Address on Wednesday, when he will lay out measures for the years ahead, local media has been busy reporting on what it might contain. While the city has said goodbye to stringent Covid-19 rules since last year’s address, the economic outlook remains weak, the birth rate is…
Not Prada but Praya: Mainland Chinese tourists use social media to search for memorable Hong Kong locations
Dressed in pink overalls with a matching lollipop in her mouth, mainland Chinese tourist Zeng crouched down next to a red Hong Kong taxi parked outside a waterfront coffee shop in Kennedy Town on a Friday afternoon. Her friend, Su, took out her phone and directed Zeng on how to pose as she composed each…
Furious pilots and a lack of trust: Why aircrew at Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific are quitting what was once a dream job
On a Cathay Pacific flight from New York to Hong Kong in July, the four people on the flight deck were discussing their plans to leave the city’s flagship airline. Benjamin, an airline captain, told HKFP about that conversation in a cafe in Central soon after disembarking. It was not, he said, an uncommon topic.…
‘I feel like I have Ebola’: Hong Kong mpox patient warns fear of enforced isolation may stop people reporting infections
When Covid-19 was at its worst in Hong Kong, a palpable fear pervaded the city: people were afraid not only of the virus, but of being forced into isolation. For some, the threat of quarantine outweighed that posed by the disease, and they chose to keep their infection to themselves rather than report it to…
COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS
As China rises, so does the suffering of billions of animals of many species
Hong Kong customs officers have intercepted a shipment of thousands of live turtles and tusks from protected hippos destined for mainland China. The smugglers were feeding an insatiable Chinese demand for animals’ bodies. With the dramatic rise of China in recent decades has come the emergence of hundreds of millions of middle-class and wealthy people…
Improving Hong Kong’s pandemic response and mental healthcare will take independent reviews – and action
Last month, the Hong Kong government lifted our Covid-19 state of emergency. A few weeks earlier, the World Health Organization had declared the pandemic over as Covid becomes endemic. These developments allow the government to focus on urgent tasks of economic development and reengaging globally. Now is also the time to reconsider a publicly available,…
Combatting ‘job-hopping’ isn’t the solution, solidarity with Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers is
By Lydia Catedral I had a baby in Hong Kong in 2021, which highlighted for me how important caregiving support is – especially in a pandemic. In a recent meeting I attended, Assistant Commissioner to Labour Cheung Hoi Shan claimed that it was families like mine – those who had babies or seniors in their…
Let art flourish in Hong Kong’s busy streets
Some say the latest public art project at Harbour City, a shopping mall in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui district, looks like gigantic hanging portraits of death. The project – collages of monochrome photographs showing smiling Hongkongers and celebrities celebrating the end of the mask rule after three years of Covid restrictions – is being…
