Secretary for Health Prof Lo Chung-mau met a delegation led by Guangdong Provincial Medical Products Administration (GDMPA) General Director Jiang Xiaodong today, with both sides agreeing to further deepen collaboration in relevant areas. Prof Lo said the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government expressed its sincere gratitude to the GDMPA for its staunch support for Hong Kong in the past, including the implementation of the initiatives of, among others, the measure of using Hong Kong registered drugs and medical devices used in Hong Kong public hospitals in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and streamlining of the approval procedures for Hong Kong registered traditional proprietary Chinese medicines (pCms) for external use to be registered and sold in the Mainland. The Government and the GDMPA agreed at the meeting to further deepen collaboration on the regulation of Chinese medicines (CM), the formulation of Greater Bay Area Chinese medicine standards,
(To watch the full media session with sign language interpretation, click here.)
Enterprises should require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 so that Hong Kong could build up a defence promptly to enable the Government to relax social distancing measures that will benefit businesses.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam made the statement ahead of today’s Executive Council meeting and stressed that raising the COVID-19 vaccination rate serves the interest of the business community.
“Encouraging, promoting or even urging enterprises and corporations to require their staff to (get) vaccinated (against COVID-19) is one of the strategies to raise the vaccination rate. I do not think we need to provide sort of tangible incentives for the private sector.
“It is to their own benefit to require their employees to be vaccinated so that Hong Kong could build up this defence as soon as possible to enable the Government to decide on more relaxations that they want to see - relaxations in the form of allowing more people or tourists to come in, relaxation in terms of the social distancing measures - so that they could do more business.
“So there is a common objective between the business world and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government to increase the vaccination rate.
“But if they want a very strong and clear message from the Government, I am now giving that very strong signal and message that they should move into the situation of requiring their employees to be vaccinated.”
Mrs Lam added that for employees who are unable to or refuse to get vaccinated, they should at least be required to produce a negative COVID-19 test result on a regular basis.
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