HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's Fung Shing Restaurant was bustling this week as customers came for one last taste of the traditional Cantonese dim sum that has made it famous.
"The biggest risk of Hong Kong in 2022 is that it may be entering the path of basically, if not recession, at least a downward drag in economic growth again while the world begins to normalize," Ng said. Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed so the city's looking into converting hotels and even unoccupied public housing into quarantine areas. But it shows no sign of backing away from matching mainland China's stringent policies even as the rest of the world learns to live with the coronavirus.
Regional rival Singapore faces a similar wave of coronavirus infections thanks to the highly contagious Omicron variant. But it has opted for a strategy of "living with COVID." That calls for very high vaccination rates and widespread testing. Unlike Hong Kong, which is requiring people who test positive to quarantine in hospitals or other government facilities, Singapore lets COVID-19 patients with mild or no symptoms isolate at home.