Hong Kong extends ban on travel from United kingdom, South Africa and 21-working day quarantine period of time

Hong Kong has prolonged its ban on all commercial flights from the Uk and South Africa until eventually even more detect to guard against new and a lot more infectious Covid-19 strains detected in both nations, describing the problem in Britain as “grim”.

“The epidemic condition worldwide stays critical, with cases of the a lot more transmissible new virus variant detected in an raising selection of spots,” claimed a government statement late Thursday.

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Photograph: GovHK.

“The situation in the Uk, wherever the new virus variant was 1st uncovered, has even more deteriorated in the previous two weeks. England is underneath lockdown once again until eventually mid-February, and the outlook in the shorter expression is grim,”

The Uk described over 60,000 new bacterial infections for two consecutive days this 7 days, as authorities struggled to have the very-infectious mutation. The country has been underneath a countrywide lockdown due to the fact Monday, with parliament on Thursday passing legislation making it possible for for the new actions to be extended for at least 3 months.

South Africa reported its highest at any time day by day determine of 20,999 scenarios on Thursday.

“After reviewing the most recent epidemic developments globally and in the relevant sites, the Authorities finds it necessary to manage the evaluate to limit people who have stayed in the Uk and South Africa from boarding for Hong Kong,” the statement study.

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Image: GovHK.

The 21-working day obligatory quarantine also remains for individuals arriving in Hong Kong from anywhere outside of China.

Each measures will be reviewed every two weeks.

The govt defended the extension of the steps on Thursday, declaring that it was required to defend the city from an outbreak of the extra infectious mutations. Hongkongers are among the these barred from returning.

“The Federal government recognises that the above necessity is pretty stringent and may perhaps inevitably affect the return journey of a quantity of Hong Kong people in the British isles or South Africa,” a spokesperson mentioned.

“We just simply cannot afford to rest the pertinent restrictions at this juncture, lest the anti-epidemic initiatives of the full community go down the drain.”

Hong Kong stays a single of only number of jurisdictions to ban its have citizens from returning.

‘Sporadic’ local community transmissions

Hong Kong has claimed 15 imported situations of the Uk mutation, 13 of which ended up imported by persons who experienced travelled from Britain. The town has detected two scenarios of the South African mutation.

The town claimed 45 new cases on Friday, all but 3 from area sources. Of the neighborhood conditions, 22 have been from untraceable resources. The Centre for Health and fitness Protection’s Head of Communicable Conditions Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan said the amount of untraceable cases signals the presence of undetected silent transmission chains in just the community.

“Most of [the untraceable cases] do not have a definite mass gathering — mostly, they are sporadic. This also signifies there may possibly be other silent transmissions…other cases we do not know nevertheless in the local community,” she explained.

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