HK won’t reopen foreign travel until outbreak eases, Lam says

Hong Kong won’t resume international travel until it contains its record-setting Covid-19 outbreak, CEO Carrie Lam said at a briefing Thursday, indicating that any reprieve for residents stuck outside the city since January is months away.

The financial hub cannot lift a ban on flights from nine countries including the US, UK and Australia because it will add more pressure to an already overwhelmed healthcare system, Lam said during the press conference. Once community infections are eliminated, preferably after a compulsory testing of the city’s entire population, Hong Kong may open up a pathway for foreign travel, she said.

“It’s not the time to immediately lift the ban,” Lam said. Once the reopening occurs, “a lot of people will rush to come back,” she said. “Inevitably among some of those people there will be infected cases. There may even be critically ill cases arising from the returns, and that would add a lot of pressure to our public hospital system.”

The current nine-country ban is already in place until April 20. 

Travel restrictions and quarantine requirements have been the cornerstone of Hong Kong’s Covid-19 Zero policy, designed to keep the pathogen out even as it propagated freely in the rest of the world. With more than half-a-million infections detected since the current outbreak began in January, however, banning travellers from other areas is unlikely to curtail its spread and keeps the once vibrant international city isolated from the rest of the world. 

Once the fifth wave is under control, preferably after mass testing contains any lingering routes of transmission, “we will certainly have plans or a pathway to open up Hong Kong again for our own people and for the international travel,” Lam said.

City Shut Down

While local infections have surged to five digits daily, Hong Kong is enforcing some of the world’s most stringent travel restrictions as other international cities open up. Returning travellers must spend two weeks in hotel quarantine to ensure they aren’t infected. 

Booking a spot has become increasingly difficult as the city uses hotels, together with public housing and makeshift hospitals, to isolate those who are infected with the virus. Authorities have identified more than 30 hotels for that purpose, with 18 already in operation, Lam said at the briefing.

Lam made the remarks in her first routine daily briefing on Hong Kong’s progress in fighting Covid-19. After two weeks without a major press conference, while the city’s outbreak quickly spiralled into one of the world’s deadliest, Lam pledged on Wednesday to brief reporters every day with different government officials to keep the public informed. 

The plan to test Hong Kong’s entire 7.4 million population has been postponed until an as-yet undetermined time in the future, Lam said yesterday, as the city shifts its focus to vaccinating the elderly and curbing serious infections and deaths. That leaves unanswered the question of when international travel may resume. 

The city’s prolonged border closures, tough social-distancing rules and worsening outbreak have driven a record number of residents to leave Hong Kong. More than 5,000 people departed the city on Sunday alone, bringing last week’s net departures to almost 23,000.

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