HK to relax curbs even with hundreds of Covid-19 cases

HONG KONG • Hong Kong will proceed with relaxing virus curbs despite recording hundreds of cases a day, as the city's Covid-19 policy drifts further from Beijing's zero-tolerance approach.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said yesterday that the city would roll back social distancing measures tomorrow as previously announced, including opening bars and extending the hours for restaurants to serve customers.

"It is reasonable to have 200 to 300 cases each day," Mrs Lam said at a regular weekly briefing. "We don't need to worry too much. It is also our assessment that we can safely enter the second phase of easing social distancing measures."

From tomorrow, dining-in at restaurants will be extended to midnight, bars will be permitted to open until 2am and mask requirements for indoor exercise will be lifted.

Mrs Lam continued to cite reopening the border with mainland China as one of her government's top priorities, without saying how that would happen.

Shanghai, China's most-populous city and one of the country's major economic engines, is slowly exiting a lockdown that confined 25 million people to their homes for six weeks as President Xi Jinping sticks with a strict zero-Covid-19 policy.

The trigger for easing in Shanghai was reporting zero infections outside the city's extensive quarantine programme. That's a far cry from the situation in Hong Kong, where hundreds of new cases are still reported daily across the city.

Instead, Hong Kong officials are focusing on driving up the city's vaccination rate to prevent a spike in serious illness that could overwhelm hospitals. By the end of this month, all eligible residents will need to have had three jabs to use the city's Vaccine Pass, a requirement to enter restaurants and many public places.

BLOOMBERG