Hong Kong introduced a collection of strict pandemic management measures on Wednesday, together with suspending flights from the United States and 7 different international locations, because it scrambled to regulate an incipient Omicron outbreak.
The new measures will deepen town’s isolation from the surface world and mark a return to the robust restrictions from the early days of the pandemic. Hong Kong has largely introduced the COVID-19 coronavirus beneath management, however the arrival of Omicron threatens to set off town’s fifth wave of the pandemic.
“Given the very dire situation of the pandemic, we have to grasp this critical moment,” Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief govt, mentioned at a information convention asserting the brand new guidelines.
A day earlier, Mrs. Lam had mentioned that no new social-distancing measures had been anticipated. But the unfold of Omicron, together with the an infection of an individual with no clear connections to town’s first Omicron cluster, evidently compelled a change.
“We have to contain the pandemic to make sure there will not be a major outbreak in the community again,” she mentioned. “We are racing with Omicron, a highly transmissible variant.”
The restrictions will make it even more durable to enter Hong Kong, which already has one of many world’s longest quarantines — as much as three weeks. Under the brand new guidelines, flights will probably be quickly banned from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and United States for 2 weeks beginning on Saturday. People who’ve not too long ago been in these international locations may also be barred from touring by different routes.
Large public occasions will probably be canceled, and several other public venues — together with bars, gyms and karaoke parlors — will probably be closed. Visits to hospitals and nursing houses may also be banned for 2 weeks. Dining in eating places will probably be banned after 6 p.m. But the federal government determined to not cease in-person instructing or require authorities officers to earn a living from home.
Hong Kong has had a rising variety of imported circumstances of the Omicron variant, with 133 as of Tuesday.
“If this continues, there will be tremendous strain on our quarantine and health care facilities,” mentioned Dr. Ronald Lam, Hong Kong’s director of well being.
The Omicron outbreak within the metropolis has been traced to a Cathay Pacific flight attendant who ignored quarantine necessities after getting back from the United States. He dined on the Moon Palace restaurant within the upscale Fashion Walk shopping center on Dec. 27, infecting his father and not less than one different particular person.
Mrs. Lam mentioned the measures had been most certainly “the most decisive, rapid, targeted and comprehensive for the past two years so that we can cut the transmission chains as soon as possible.”
The restrictions got here as Hong Kong well being authorities on Wednesday ordered a Royal Caribbean cruise ship to return to port early as officers looked for the contacts of a Covid-19 affected person.
Nine individuals who boarded the ship, the Spectrum of the Seas, on Jan. 2 had come into contact with the affected person, who didn’t board the ship, the federal government mentioned in an announcement. The folks had been informed to quarantine as quickly as they had been recognized as contacts, although they preliminarily examined damaging.
John Yoon contributed reporting.