HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - Hong Kong's financial regulator has unveiled rules for quarantine-free business travel to the Chinese mainland, laying out some of the first details, with leader Carrie Lam saying the long-awaited plan to reopen the border will go ahead amid China's first Omicron case.

Mrs Lam said she has not foreseen a need to alter plans to reopen the city’s border with the mainland, despite China reporting its first case of the Omicron variant. She told reporters at a regular news briefing on Tuesday (Dec 14) that the officials from the city had met with mainland counterparts in neighboring Guangdong province to discuss reopening plans.

The discussions are continuing despite China’s northern port of Tianjin confirming the country’s first omicron case in an incoming traveller, according to the Global Times newspaper. 

"At this moment, I do not see the change to what we are doing in terms of resumption of normal travel into the mainland, as a result of omicron," Mrs Lam told reporters. "But because this variant and the whole situation could be changing very rapidly, so I could provide a no absolute guarantee."

Travel will initially be quite limited, with only staff or directors of a licensed corporation who have regional roles, and whose main purpose is to travel to nearby Guangdong province to manage mainland business, allowed to pre-register, Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said late on Monday on the first phase of the plan.

Each company may submit one pre-registration, and it will be limited to just two executives each calendar month.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam has prioritised restarting travel with China over opening up to the rest of the world, a goal that has seen Hong Kong adopt Beijing's stringent Covid-19-zero policy to keep infections out of the financial hub.

Discussions with mainland officials over the past few months have coincided with a tightening of the city's Covid-19 quarantine system, already one of the toughest in the world, and procedures for monitoring cases in the community.

Hong Kong launched a China-style health code on Dec 10, putting the city's tracking capabilities on a par with the mainland's.

The voluntary app is designed to be compatible with systems in neighbouring Macau and Guangdong, and record a user's real name, address and identification number.

The emergence of Omicron has seen Hong Kong fortify its quarantine system in recent days, with travellers from countries with cases of the variant now required to spend a week or 21 days in quarantine in an isolation camp.

Under the financial regulator's plan, a successful registration will allow the executive to then apply for quarantine-free travel to Guangdong. Pre-registrations via the SFC will not guarantee quarantine-free travel as that is still subject to a daily quota administered by another government agency. The SFC will begin accepting pre-registrations with a Dec 17 deadline.

When the border reopens, travel may initially be capped at 1,000 people a day, local news outlet HK01 reported last month, citing unidentified sources.

China and Hong Kong are the last global holdouts on the strict Covid-19-zero strategy, which involves walling out the virus with border curbs and quarantines, and chasing every case that emerges internally.

Other adherents, from Singapore to Australia, have slowly moved away from the approach, which has left countries isolated as the rest of the world opens up and lives alongside Covid-19.

Foreign business groups in Hong Kong have criticised its virus strategy, saying it puts the city's status as a global financial hub at risk.