Hong Kong appears set to return to its most stringent social-distancing rules, with the government expected to announce that public gatherings will be capped at two people and a new “vaccine pass” will be extended to shopping malls, the Post has learned.
The new measures will be approved by the Executive Council, the city leader’s de facto cabinet, on Tuesday morning, according to a source familiar with the situation.
However, the source said the vaccine pass would not initially be extended to public transport, as was previously mooted, because of the difficulty of implementation and possible disruptions to the flow of people around the city.
“The government will limit all restaurants to two people per table after tightening social-distancing rules,” the source added.
The last time Hong Kong imposed such strict limits on gatherings was back in July 2020.
The news of the impending restrictions came as Hong Kong was expecting to confirm 383 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, with another 400 preliminary-positive cases still awaiting verification, according to a medical source.
The day before, authorities confirmed a record-shattering 614 new infections, and more than 600 preliminary ones. However, the source said a “large number” of Monday’s preliminary cases remained unconfirmed as of Tuesday.
Speaking at her weekly press briefing on Tuesday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the city would “stand by its dynamic zero infection strategy”, and defended the approach as essential to maintaining the city’s public health system and preventing deaths amid a worsening fifth wave of coronavirus infections.
She insisted that the strategy was needed to “buy time” for people to get vaccinated, while also calling on members of the public to stay home and limit their activities.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks to the press on Tuesday. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
“We need your support; we need your cooperation … Your help comes in a very easy form: just stay at home,” Lam said before her weekly Executive Council meeting.
As she has at other recent press conferences, Lam addressed reporters without a face mask, a decision she has previously defended as necessary so the public can “feel her emotions”.
“Some have said the measures may cause Hong Kong to pay a heavy price socially and economically. But people’s lives and the need to prevent hospitals from being overloaded is worth a lot more,” she added.
She also said Beijing had reached out to her to express its willingness to help Hong Kong maintain its dynamic zero infection policy – the preferred method of pandemic containment in mainland China. A mainland official and a Communist Party mouthpiece have warned the city in recent days against pivoting towards a strategy of “living with the virus”, as much of the world has.
Health experts have warned that the exponential growth in cases could soon send the daily count into quadruple-digits.
Authorities have been struggling to cope with the surge of new infections over the past few days, which they blamed in part on family gatherings during Lunar New Year. People ordered to undergo mandatory testing have complained about excessive waiting times, while hospitalised patients have raised concerns about questionable hygiene standards at one medical facility.
The government announced on Tuesday that, in light of the Omicron variant’s shorter incubation period, people living in high-risk neighbourhoods would only have to take two compulsory coronavirus tests, not three.
In bid to ease the strain on public hospitals, health authorities announced on Monday that they would have to start sending patients with mild or no symptoms to the government’s quarantine camp at Penny’s Bay, while allowing close contacts of carriers to self-isolate at home.
Lam already announced last Friday that the government would soon give away rapid antigen tests as a supplementary tool to encourage universal self-testing and early detection.
The city has also boosted its capacity to conduct testing, contact-tracing and detection of the virus in sewage samples.
Respiratory medicine expert Dr Leung Chi-chiu said tightening social-distancing rules would not bring case numbers down on its own, but it would “create a sense of urgency” among the public.
“The tight social-distancing rules give the perception that people should stay home and reduce their activities,” Leung told a radio programme.
Leung also said that since many new patients had minor or no symptoms, most could skip the hospital and go straight into isolation to reduce their contact with others.
He added that the government should consider using hotels to isolate coronavirus patients if quarantine facilities filled up.
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