Ethical Issues Arising from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong

This article reviews and discusses ethical issues that emerged in the public realm in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong, between January 2021 and March 2022. Emerging infectious diseases are complex and bring about uncertain challenges. Although many of the ethical issues during the pandemic were universally experienced, it is important to understand them within the local contexts in which they arose. The paper reports on observations related to some of these ethical issues, namely, the process of informed consent for COVID-19 vaccination and its limitations, and the challenge of arriving at vaccination decisions for mentally incapacitated elders.