Coronavirus: has Hong Kong learned the hard lessons of Sars or is it repeating the same mistakes?

After the Sars outbreak of 2003 claimed 299 lives in Hong Kong, a postmortem of the city’s missteps held a handful of senior officials accountable. The most high profile figure was health minister Yeoh Eng-kiong.A Legislative Council report in 2004 found Yeoh responsible for a catalogue of failings, including insufficient communication with the public, poor supervision of the health department, and inadequate monitoring of the Hospital Authority, which did not have a contingency plan for large…