Hong Kong Covid-19 quarantine: scramble for rooms as city residents stuck abroad plan return, with some hotels ‘fully booked till August’
- A check by the Post on 43 hotels shows only four of them still have rooms available in April, while at least 33 others only have vacancies after May
- Overseas Hongkongers share frustrations of trying to change bookings to take advantage of travel curbs set to ease next month
Hongkongers looking to take advantage of eased travel curbs to return to the city have found themselves scrambling to secure hotel rooms for quarantine, with some premises fully booked until August, the Post has found.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Monday revealed that existing control measures – which are some of the world’s most stringent – would be lifted early next month. Officials and medical experts had cited projection models in concluding that the city’s latest and worst Covid-19 outbreak might have peaked.
From April 1, inbound flights from nine countries – Australia, Canada, France, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States – will resume after being suspended on January 5.
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Fully vaccinated residents will only need to quarantine for seven days, down from two weeks, if they test negative for the coronavirus through PCR screening on the fifth day of their stay, as well as on a rapid antigen test on both the sixth and seventh days.
Hong Kong residents still have to test negative within 48 hours and have a valid reservation at a designated quarantine hotel before they can board flights to the city.
The government added another 18 quarantine hotels with some 6,000 rooms following Monday’s announcement, bringing the total to 43 with about 12,000 rooms after May, the Food and Health Bureau said in a reply to a query from the Post.
But a check on the 43 hotels by the Post found only four of them still had rooms available in April, while seven others only had bookings in May.
