Coronavirus: Hong Kong residents return home, holidaymakers prepare to fly out as travel curbs eased; city reports 5,823 new Covid cases
- Shorter hotel quarantine, lifting of flight bans from April 1 spurs residents to return to Hong Kong, while others make holiday bookings
- But some holidaymakers worry they might be stranded elsewhere if city authorities suddenly reinstate travel restrictions
Thousands of residents started travelling back to Hong Kong and holidaymakers raced to book flights to faraway destinations on Friday after authorities eased some of the city’s tough Covid-19 travel curbs, while health officials recorded 5,823 new infections.
From Friday, the compulsory quarantine period for those arriving in Hong Kong was halved to seven days. The government also lifted a flight ban imposed on January 8 on Australia, Canada, France, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States.
Announcing the easing of restrictions on Thursday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said more than 2,000 Hong Kong residents stranded overseas were also expected to return on Friday. This also meant thousands of foreign domestic helpers stranded in the Philippines could return to the city, with employment agencies expecting to clear the backlog in the next two months.
Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) on Friday said the authorities had closely scrutinised arrivals after discovering that two inbound travellers carried the new XE recombinant – a combination of two Omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2 – in early February.
“They have been isolated and treated and there have been no similar variants found locally,” she said.
However, the health department later clarified the pair did not have XE. Professor Leo Poon Lit-man from the University of Hong Kong told the Post that it was another recombinant of the two Omicron subvariants and it was first detected by HKU.
The World Health Organization (WHO) published preliminary findings on Tuesday that the XE recombinant was first detected in Britain on January 19, and so far more than 600 genetic samples were confirmed to carry the strain. The WHO said its early findings still needed to be confirmed.
Chuang said: “Some countries have found recombinant variants, this is also closely monitored by the WHO. The transmissibility and the severity of this recombinant variant are still being investigated, and we will closely monitor the situation.”
