Hong Kong unlikely to end hotel quarantine rules for travellers before July

HONG KONG • Hong Kong will likely keep mandatory hotel quarantine rules for incoming travellers until at least the end of next month, its outgoing leader said, despite business leaders' growing calls for the city to join the rest of the world in opening up again.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said yesterday at a regular press conference that a significant number of the city's daily Covid-19 infections still came from imported cases.

Considering that new Covid-19 variants were emerging globally, the financial hub still had to be extremely careful in loosening curbs on border controls, she said.

"It's very unlikely that during my term there would be more relaxations on the border controls," Mrs Lam said. "In other words, we will still have the hotel quarantine. We will still require vaccination before a passenger can board a plane to Hong Kong and we will still impose the test and hold, whether at the airport or at a hotel, for a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, in order to keep Hong Kong safe."

Mrs Lam's term expires at the end of June, clearing the way for former chief secretary John Lee to be installed as leader on July 1 - the 25th anniversary of the city's handover from British to Chinese rule.

Hong Kong is under pressure from the its business community and foreign airlines to drop its mandatory hotel quarantine for incoming vaccinated travellers - a policy that has isolated the financial hub and been criticised as ineffective after failing to keep out the Omicron variant.

While tight border controls have left Hong Kong lagging behind places that have opened up, the city has drifted in recent months from President Xi Jinping's zero-tolerance policy, which aims to eliminate all community cases and led to lockdowns in mainland cities.

BLOOMBERG