By Farah Master and Scott Murdoch
HONG KONG (Reuters) – In Hong Kong, strict COVID-19 restrictions have made students’ lives incredibly difficult for a long time. Now, a new rule requiring higher degrees of vaccination may disappoint progress toward resuming full-day face-to-face classes.
More delays in overall school life threaten to exacerbate young people’s intellectual fitness problems and give more reasons to leave the city, further undermining it as an Asian financial center, educators and business leaders warn.
“There is so much uncertainty about whether the catepasses are going to be canceled, can young people go to school?School uncertainty contributes to other people’s flight and it is difficult to attract other people to Hong Kong,” said Robert Quinlivan, director of the city’s Australian Chamber of Commerce.
Some 30,000 academics have withdrawn from Hong Kong schools in the subsequent school year and more than 5,000 have resigned, according to government data.
Many are part of an exodus sparked by Beijing’s efforts to exert more on the city and which has been further driven by COVID restrictions. Around 113,000 citizens left the former British colony in the first part of 2022. This includes expats and local families, many of them who have benefited from visa systems submitted through Britain, Canada and Australia.
In an effort to increase the city’s vaccination rates, the government stipulated this month that after November 1, the best schools can have full-day in-person categories if 90% of students have won 3 COVID vaccines.
Achieving this purpose before that date will be very complicated for many schools, the teachers told Reuters, refusing to be known because they were allowed to speak to the media.
The maximum notice will affect foreign schools, which have recently resumed full-time face-to-face categories, having obtained 90% degrees for students with two COVID injections. Local schools and some number one foreign schools are still limited to half. -in-person and half-day online categories due to declining vaccination rates.
“SENSE OF DEATH”
Schools offering exam systems have historically been a great charm for expatriate professionals who are based in Hong Kong for its reputation as a cosmopolitan financial and advertising hub near China.
With a population of 7. 3 million, the city has more than 70 foreign schools. By comparison, in Japan, Tokyo and Yokohama, with a combined population of about 18 million, have about forty.
Hong Kong students, who have done much of their online learning for the past two and a half years, feel defeated and there is a “sense of unhappiness” in schools, said Leo, 27, a former high school teacher. his task in July, fed up with the restrictions imposed by the city’s adoption of China’s COVID-zero strategy that aims to eliminate all outbreaks.
“The constant adjustments between face-to-face categories and online courses have weighed on their willingness to learn,” Leo added, asking that only his first call be used. He now works as a flight attendant.
While there are diversifications from one school to another, other regulations imposed on students include quarantining full swimming categories (where masks are not worn) if a child is inflamed and prohibiting young people from dining on school premises with half-day face-to-face classes. Some fellows with full-time categories are not allowed to bring food that requires utensils, while all young people from the age of two will be required to wear a mask outside their homes.
The brakes run counter to global efforts to “live with the virus. “Hong Kong schoolchildren have also faced much longer periods of school disruptions than mainland China, which has imposed draconian lockdowns but has also experienced long periods without COVID.
The restrictions almost actually have an effect on mental health, educators and medical experts said.
More than a portion of Hong Kong’s roughly 3,600 high school students showed symptoms of depression, according to a November study by the city’s Federation of Youth Groups.
The Hong Kong Education Bureau has said that COVID measures in schools exist for the health of students. He added that he will update the regulations if necessary, without giving additional details.
But medical experts say that when the effect on intellectual fitness and overall social progress is taken into account, city policies can do more harm than good.
“To focus in particular on the small number of child deaths from COVID is to ignore the big picture. The purpose of public fitness is to make decisions that are smarter for the physical state of the population,” said David Owens, physician and founder of the OT Clinic Chain.
(Reporting via Farah Master and Scott Murdoch; Additional reporting through Jessie Pang; Editing via Edwina Gibbs)
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