Hong Kong to close off beaches after mainland China uproar

HONG KONG (AFP, REUTERS) - Hong Kong will close most of the city’s beaches, leader Carrie Lam said on Wednesday (March 16), after photos of maskless residents enjoying sun and surf sparked outrage in mainland China.

The rules add to Hong Kong’s already strict distancing measures, including wearing masks while hiking and a ban on gatherings of more than two.

“As we see a surge of people going to beaches, we have to take appropriate measures in order to protect our system, to reduce the public’s movements to ensure safety,” Mrs Lam told reporters.

Authorities said they will begin taping off the beaches on Thursday.

Mrs Lam’s announcement comes on the heels of anger from Chinese social media users, who have blamed the spread of Covid-19 in the mainland on Hong Kong’s sluggish epidemic response.

Hong Kong has reported more than 760,000 Covid-19 infections and about 4,500 deaths, most of them in the past three weeks. The city has not gone into lockdown.

But tens of millions of people in mainland China were abruptly placed under stay at home orders this week, after the emergence of more than 3,000 daily new cases as Beijing battles to maintain its “dynamic zero” Covid-19 strategy.

Nearby Shenzhen, with a population of 17 million, was locked down on Monday after an Omicron flare-up in factories and neighbourhoods linked to Hong Kong.

“How can they be so carefree and go to the beach while Shenzhen is under lockdown? So selfish,” one user wrote on Weibo.

“All of Guangdong province is crying for what Hong Kong has been doing,” another wrote.

Earlier in the day, Mrs Lam had said there were no plans to further tighten Covid-19 rules but said a chief executive election, set for May, had scope to be further delayed.

Mrs Lam told a daily press briefing that "legally speaking" there was room to further delay the election for the global financial hub's next leader.

"A further delay cannot be decided by the Hong Kong special administrative region itself, it depends on how the central government sees it," she added.

The election was originally scheduled to be held on March 27 but was postponed to May 8 as a wave of the highly transmissible Omicron variant erupted in the Chinese-ruled city in February.

Mrs Lam, who has not yet confirmed whether she would seek another term, has seen her administration come under pressure from President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials for Hong Kong's handling of the virus. 

The former British colony has followed mainland China's "dynamic zero" policy which seeks to curb all outbreaks as soon as they occur, instead of trying to live with the virus.

But deaths have spiked, particularly among its mostly unvaccinated elderly, with the city registering the most deaths per million people globally in the week to March 14, according to the Our World in Data publication.

The city is already facing its most draconian measures since the pandemic started in 2020. Gatherings of more than two people are banned, most venues are shut - including schools - and masks are compulsory everywhere, even when exercising outdoors.

Hong Kong's borders have been effectively sealed for two years with few flights able to land and most transit passengers banned.