Hong Kong’s leader has cautioned against pushing ahead with lifting three days of medical surveillance for inbound travellers, saying “a steady and orderly” approach is needed as imported coronavirus cases have seen a more than twofold increase since hotel quarantine was axed.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, who has faced mounting pressure from the business sector to get the border with mainland China fully reopened, also said that keeping the pandemic situation under proper control would provide “a much stronger basis” for talks on the situation.
“The proportion [of imported cases] is quite large, and new subvariants have also entered Hong Kong,” Lee said before the Executive Council’s weekly meeting on Tuesday.
“Even though the current assessment is that the harm they may cause might not be bigger than the existing virus in our communities, we need to pay attention.”
Citing official figures, Lee noted an upwards trend in daily infections, which were hovering at below 5,000, while the number of imported cases had more than doubled to more than 300 a day recently, compared with about 100 when the mandatory hotel quarantine was in force until September 25.
During the past two weeks under the “0+3” regime, the number of arrivals had increased by 30 per cent, exceeding 7,000 on Monday. The number of foreign travellers arriving in Hong Kong had risen by 80 per cent, he added.
