HK plans to reduce hotel quarantine requirement for inbound travellers

HONG KONG • Hong Kong plans to cut hotel quarantine for arrivals with the introduction of a two-colour health code system, local media reported yesterday.

The government is considering moving to five days of hotel quarantine, after which arrivals will be issued with a so-called yellow health code for two days that would prohibit them from entering high-risk areas where masks can be removed.

Another option under consideration is four days of hotel isolation followed by three days of yellow-code restrictions, according to Sing Tao, which cited a person it did not identify.

Hong Kong currently requires a seven-day quarantine for arrivals.

Separately, the South China Morning Post said the authorities could even shorten the hotel quarantine to three days as they put the finishing touches to the China-style health code.

Officials are pushing to make Hong Kong's vaccine pass system tied to the Leave Home Safe app more effective by identifying infected people with a red code and giving arrivals in quarantine a yellow code, the Post reported, citing people it did not identify.

The government is expected to make a decision in the next one to two weeks, the Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao said.

Separately, Hong Kong will require travellers to the city to fill out an electronic health declaration form before boarding a flight, no longer allowing them to do the paperwork after landing, in an effort to make the process more efficient, the government said in a statement on Sunday.

The new system will begin on Thursday on a trial basis.

In addition to standard health and arrival details, passengers must provide proof of vaccination and a reference number for a quarantine hotel stay in order to get the QR code needed to board a flight into the Asian financial hub, the government said.

Hong Kong on Sunday reported 4,250 new Covid-19 infections, including 186 imported cases.

Meanwhile, China's Covid-19 cases fell to the lowest in a week, even as officials in the financial hub of Shanghai and the gaming enclave of Macau ramped up mass testing. China reported 680 cases for Sunday, down from 869 on Saturday and the lowest daily tally since July 17.

Still, the authorities continue to roll out testing blitzes to catch flare-ups and stamp out outbreaks.

In Macau, all residents must perform daily rapid Covid-19 tests on themselves and report the results to the government for the next week, with mass laboratory tests slated for the coming weekend.

The testing drive comes as Macau enters a period of "consolidation", where it attempts to keep new cases at an ultra-low level even as it reopens casinos.

Meanwhile, Shanghai has announced that it will conduct two rounds of mandatory mass testing in nine of its 16 districts between today and Thursday in order to reduce outbreak risks. The city reported 18 new cases for Sunday and found three additional local asymptomatic infections outside of quarantine for yesterday before 5pm.

The mandatory mass testing, which has been conducted frequently since the city emerged from a bruising two-month lockdown early last month, comes on top of a requirement for everyone in Shanghai to test every other day to move around freely.

Residents are already required to hold a negative polymerase chain reaction test result obtained within the previous 72 hours to get into public places like shopping malls, office buildings and restaurants.

BLOOMBERG