HK set to reduce quarantine days for vaccinated visitors

From as soon as the end of this month or early next month, fully vaccinated visitors to Hong Kong will have their mandatory quaran-tine reduced by seven days.

For travellers from low-risk areas including Singapore, Australia and New Zealand who have taken all required doses of the vaccine, their mandatory quarantine in designated hotels will be seven days instead of 14.

For those from high-and medium-risk areas, they will serve a 14-day quarantine instead of 21 days.

All inoculated visitors will have to self-monitor for another seven days after their quarantine, the Hong Kong government said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The 21-day quarantine requirement for Hong Kong residents who fly back to the city from elsewhere, with the exception of China, remains.

Even as the city moves to ease quarantine measures for those who have been inoculated, officials have tightened rules for flights to reduce the "risk of importation of mutant strain of the virus from very high-risk places".

There is now a 14-day ban on any flight that has three or more confirmed cases of Covid-19, instead of five cases previously. Infections are detected as passengers arriving in Hong Kong have to undergo mandatory tests.

The ban will also apply if two or more passengers on any two flights of the same airline from the same place to Hong Kong within a seven-day period are found to have the virus.

Previously, the threshold was three infected cases on two consecutive flights.

To keep the virus variant N501Y - discovered in South Africa - out of Hong Kong as much as possible, the government said that any airline which has five confirmed cases or more of this variant will be banned from landing in the city for 14 days.

The development comes as Singapore and Hong Kong are finalising the details of a travel bubble where passengers will have to get tested to take the direct flights.

Under the agreement, these visitors will not have to serve any quarantine.

This week, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Hong Kong will impose the vaccination requirement on people flying out of the city on the travel bubble flights.

Hong Kong's daily infections have tapered to low single digits, with most of the cases in recent weeks imported. There have been more than 11,600 confirmed cases and 209 deaths so far.

Hong Kong officials, troubled by the sluggish vaccination rate, are now aggressively pushing for residents to get the jabs by lowering the age limit.

From next Friday, residents aged 16 to 29 can book appointments. Currently, only people aged 30 and above can go for the jabs.

Those aged 18 or above can choose to take either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Chinese Sinovac vaccines.

Those aged 16 and 17 will have to show parental consent and can receive only the Pfizer jabs.

"The expansion will cover an additional 1.08 million Hong Kong citizens, with the city's vaccination programme now covering a total of 6.5 million people, equivalent to 88 per cent of Hong Kong's total population," Secretary for Civil Service Patrick Nip, who helms the voluntary inoculation drive, said yesterday.

More than 950,000 doses of vaccines have been administered to a population of 7.5 million.

To incentivise people to get the inoculation, Mrs Lam said on Monday that the government will ease social distancing measures for those who are fully vaccinated.

The move to extend dine-in services and triple the cap on the number of patrons per table at an eatery where staff and customers have taken their jabs also comes as pressure mounts on people's livelihoods and for officials to revive the economy.

Measures including mask wearing and public gatherings of no more than four will last till April 28.