Hong Kong’s New Leader Stresses Cautious Opening on Virus
(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong's new leader, John Lee, declared the city must balance reducing travel inconvenience with limiting the spread of Covid-19, signaling a cautious virus approach.
Lee said Tuesday that he'd asked Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau to assess the “evidence and statistics to see how we can, while on the one hand, contain the spread of the pandemic and, at the same time, reduce inconvenience to travelers,” at his first weekly news briefing since being sworn into office by President Xi Jinping last week.
“One of the areas that he's looking at is how the duration of quarantine should be handled,” Lee added. He also warned that people in Hong Kong should only be allowed to go about their “normal activities” once being “identified” as not infected, to prevent a spike in deaths.
Hong Kong's new administration has inherited the problem that plagued former Chief Executive Carrie Lam's final years in office: how to balance demands from the city's business community to open international borders with Beijing's requirement to limit virus cases in line with its strict Covid Zero policy.
Lee offered no concrete solutions at the Tuesday briefing, only saying that his government was considering ways to satisfy both goals, without acknowledging the seemingly contradictory nature of simultaneously achieving those tasks.
Hong Kong still imposes seven-day hotel quarantines for incoming vaccinated travelers. There are just 24,000 rooms available for the city's eighth cycle from August until the end of October, making availability scarce. Meanwhile, flight suspensions that punish airlines for carrying passengers infected with Covid continue to wreak havoc on the travel plans of those trying to enter the city.
On Monday, Hong Kong suspended flights from Emirates Airline, Qatar Airways and Thai Airways International Pcl. Bans are triggered if either 5% or five or more people on a flight test positive on arrival, whichever value is greater. Bans and fines are also handed out if passengers have improper paperwork.
Bloomberg News reported last week that the government is considering cutting the time inbound travelers must stay isolated in hotel rooms to five days, followed by two days at home.
(Updates throughout.)
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©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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