Last coronavirus restriction on travel between Hong Kong and mainland China dropped
- Travellers from both sides of the border welcome the move and predict it will cut queues and make process easier
- Politician predicts the change in policy could help ‘facilitate the flow of people between Hong Kong and mainland’
Travellers between Hong Kong and mainland China will no longer be required to fill in a health declaration form after the transport industry was told that the last Covid-19 restriction measure would be dropped on Wednesday.
A Post reporter who crossed the border at the West Kowloon high-speed railway station on Sunday afternoon did not have to fill in the online health declaration to get a QR code – often referred to as the “black code” – to continue on to the mainland.
The code scanners at the control point were turned off and the monitors used as part of the scanning process were blacked out. Officials just waved the reporter through.
Coco Yung, a Hong Kong resident and housewife in her thirties, said she made frequent trips between the city and the mainland and the axing of scanning requirements had made travel easier because she had had to queue for five to 10 minutes with her children.
“Now the pandemic is over, it is no longer necessary to do whatever health declaration,” she said.
She added that she thought the restrictions should all have been cancelled after the border reopened in February.
Pro-establishment politicians, who have called for months for the health declaration process to be axed, welcomed the move, as travellers no longer need to spend time filling in an online form to generate the QR code, which had created long queues.
One-day traveller Sin Ong, 22, from Shenzhen, said the mainland police made the announcement that no QR code was required to pass checkpoints.
