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Article History

Received: 23 September 2025

Accepted: 9 June 2026

First Online: 3 July 2026

Declarations

Conflict of Interest: BJC consults for AstraZeneca, Fosun Pharma, GSK, Haleon, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer, Roche, and Sanofi Pasteur. All other authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Ethics Approval: Approvals for this study were obtained from the Institutional Review Board of The University of Hong Kong and The Hospital Authority Hong Kong West Cluster (reference number HKU/HA HKW IRB: UW 20-341), and the study was performed in accordance with the standards of ethics outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki .

Consent to Participate: The data collection process was part of the Government of Hong Kong public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore, informed consent from individual study participants was not required.

Consent for Publication: Not applicable.

Code availability: Not applicable.

Consent Availability of Data and Material: Restrictions apply to the availability of the data used for this study. Authors must not transmit or release the data, in whole or in part, and in whatever form or media, or to any other parties or place outside of Hong Kong and must fully comply with the duties under the law relating to the protection of personal data, including those under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance and its principles in all aspects.

Author Contributions: GNO: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualisation, Validation, Original manuscript drafting, Reviewing & editing of the submitted manuscript. YL: Data curation, Visualisation, Reviewing & editing of the submitted manuscript. PW: Visualisation, Reviewing & editing of the submitted manuscript. BJC: Conceptualisation, Visualisation, Supervision, Reviewing & editing of the submitted manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript and agree to be accountable for the work.