20 Hong Kong lawmakers may miss first meeting of Legislative Council’s new term due to birthday party fiasco
- Four lawmakers are in government quarantine after the ill-fated birthday party, while 16 who were later exempted have been asked to isolate at home
- Legco president Andrew Leung notes he cannot make the lawmakers skip the event, but urged them to use their ‘political wisdom’
Twenty members of Hong Kong’s legislature appear set to miss the first meeting of its new term after the body’s president asked them to stay home until they returned three more negative coronavirus tests following a potential brush with the coronavirus at a recent birthday party.
All 214 attendees were initially ordered to serve 21 days of quarantine at the government’s Penny’s Bay facility, though some, including 11 officials, were later released after a separate suspected case detected at the party was declared a false positive.
However, the 11 officials will still be required to self-isolate at home for nearly two weeks – using their own leave in the process – and test negative three times, with Legislative Council president Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen calling for lawmakers to take similar measures on Monday.
“For the sake of containing the pandemic, I will also strongly recommend the lawmakers who had their quarantine order similarly lifted to take reasonable anti-epidemic measures by staying at home [until they test negative three times],” he said.
