Over 6,000 vaccinated after first day of programme

The government says 6,000 people received their first Covid-19 vaccine shot on Friday, the first official day of Hong Kong’s vaccination programme. The SAR’s inoculation total now stands at 6,600, as hundreds were vaccinated as part of a pilot scheme that began on Tuesday.

The government also said that the German BioNTech vaccine, distributed by the mainland firm Fosun, would arrive at Hong Kong International Airport at 10 am on Saturday, two days later than planned.

Although the BioNTech vaccine was the first to be approved by the SAR, it will be the second to arrive after the mainland’s Sinovac vaccine.

A million Sinovac doses were flown in from Beijing on February 19, a day after the jab was approved.

This means Hong Kong residents inoculated under the programme have so far only received the Sinovac jab. It is traditional in nature, using a deactivated virus to produce an immune response.

The BioNTech vaccine, on the other hand, is a new type of vaccine that uses messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA.

This is a type of genetic code that instructs the body to make the spiked part of the Covid-19 virus, which in turn tricks the body into creating antibodies that can fight the real virus.

In addition to BioNTech and Sinovac, the SAR government has also ordered a vaccine jointly developed by Oxford University and Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

The Oxford vaccine is different again. It has been produced from a chimpanzee common cold virus that has been rendered harmless but with genetic information from Covid-19 added into it to bring about antibody production.

All of the vaccines ordered by the government require two shots.