HONG KONG: Scores of mainland Chinese travellers are rushing to Hong Kong to receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which are not available on the mainland, as the country grapples with a torrent of infections that have overwhelmed its health system.
A private hospital in the special Chinese administrative region of Hong Kong welcomed the first batch of mainland customers on Thursday , just five days after China reopened its borders for the first time in three years, allowing quarantine-free travel. Yoyo Liang, a 36-year-old Beijing resident, was one of the first customers at the Virtus Medical Centre where she paid HK$1,888 for her first BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
Liang had received three domestically developed vaccine doses from China's Sinovac over the past two years but said she took Pfizer-BioNtech's bivalent booster vaccine to better protect herself against the virus. "I was very tempted to get the vaccine because of the border reopening. There is no bivalent vaccine available in mainland China," she explained after she received her jab.
The other side of the fence is always greener.
新加坡歡迎你們來接種二價疫苗