How Hong Kong Went from ‘Zero COVID’ to Having the World’s Highest Death Rate

From overwhelmed hospitals to overflowing morgues, the scenes from Hong Kong’s COVID-19 crisis were strikingly similar to those that unfolded around the world in the early months of the pandemic.

Except that for the wealthy city of 7.5 million people, the sight of bodies piling up in hallways and around patients in hospitals emerged only this month, a year after vaccines against the virus became widely and freely available in the territory.

In a matter of weeks, the contagious Omicron variant of the virus has infected more than 1 million people and caused more...