Three months into the unprecedented third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in July, Hong Kong appears to be entering its final stages, as the SAR government reports a single-digit number of new cases a day — at least for the most part.

But again, we are not in a position to be complacent or to expect a quick return to normality.

In terms of containing the pandemic, while we are definitely not the worst-performing city in the world, a number of cases are still untraceable. This means that these unidentified or “invisible” carriers are still out and about and pose threats to the rest of the populace. And the worst-case scenario — or rather, most-likely scenario — is that their numbers may multiply and develop into more clusters, and therefore many more cases.

Thinking about the position that Hong Kong currently finds itself in, an old Chinese adage comes to mind: “When a wildfire can’t burn out, the spring wind will bring it back.”

For this pandemic, it is not the spring wind but the winter cold front forecast to arrive this week that will beckon the virus back into being and thus launch the fourth wave.

And more alarmingly, it has been predicted that tens of thousands of people may succumb to the virus during the fourth wave, the effect of which, again, will be further exacerbated by the upcoming winter.

Therefore, we must call on the government to step up its efforts in prevention and be ready for the worst to come. And we as a city must also do the same, or this virus — which shows no sign of abating — will continue to beat us.

As for the Chinese mainland’s efforts in combating COVID-19, it appears to be coming out on top. Perhaps we ought to take a page out of its book.

It goes without saying that we do not need to reinvent the wheel, we need only to observe the best practices on the mainland and implement them — more or less in their entirety — in our own fight against COVID-19.

On Sept 1, the Hong Kong SAR government garnered inspiration from the central government’s rigorous universal testing program and launched the Universal Community Testing Programme, which ran for two weeks.

The program tested some 1.78 million Hong Kong people, and identified 42 carriers — which equates to about two infections per 100,000 people. Out of the 42 identified carriers, 32 tested positive and the remaining 10 were identified through contact tracing.

It was also found that 13 of the carriers were asymptomatic, and 20 out of the 32 local cases had unknown sources of infection.

Unfortunately, the good intentions of the testing program failed to meet its goals, and the program has been labeled a colossal and costly failure.

If we consider that Hong Kong has a population of 7.5 million people and that only 1.78 million people were tested, then what of the remaining 5.72 million people? And if we were to apply the statistic of about 2 infections per 100,000 people to those who didn’t participate in the program, then that means there may be at least 114 carriers at large in Hong Kong.

We already know how quickly and rapidly this virus spreads, so I want to impress upon all readers how serious this situation is. Ideally, the testing program should have covered the whole population. In the end, we didn’t because most people did not see it as their responsibility to join the program. Better publicity might have yielded a higher participation rate, but it would not be realistic to expect total participation in any voluntary program.

All we have to do is look at countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and France, where the death tolls are much higher in comparison to Hong Kong’s own numbers. These nations have been slow to implement contact tracing.

Between Europe and the US, nearly half a million people have perished from COVID-19 or COVID-19-related deaths (i.e., complications caused by contracting the virus).

And if the pandemic continues to rage across Hong Kong, we can only expect to experience even more of an economic downturn than we already are, which might evolve into another Great Depression. Food, retail, travel and tourism, and the medical sector have all been heavily affected by the pandemic; and with no end in sight either. Many in the service industry have had to take serious pay cuts, and severe job losses have also been seen across these sectors.

As for healthcare, elective surgeries by doctors and surgeons have now been postponed indefinitely in order to cope with the strain due to COVID-19 cases; many doctors and medical employees have been volunteering their time to reduce the strain on our healthcare system. And the patients themselves do not want to have non-urgent operations during this time too.

Ordinary citizens have also paid in some way, as many have opted — or have been prevented — from traveling anywhere overseas, for work, family, leisure or social purposes. Sadly, many have been unable to visit or even say a final goodbye to dying relatives.

The city is hemorrhaging in economic and social terms. If we don’t do enough and do it quickly enough to stanch the bleeding, our city will slide into a coma.

Now that we know voluntary testing did not and cannot identify all carriers, we are left with only one other option, and this is compulsory and citywide comprehensive testing, possibly combined with a return to lockdowns, curfews in some public places, stricter contact tracing, and so on. It’s clear that we need to bite the bullet if we are to ever see the back of the pandemic and to expect some semblance of an economic recovery. There is no other alternative.

Some have concerns surrounding privacy of biometric data and so on, but with strategic planning, we can certainly balance our security against our survival. Privacy is nothing when it is a matter of life or death.

The author is president of Wisdom Hong Kong, a think tank.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.