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Opinion | Hong Kong risks reopening mainland border at the worst moment
- Hong Kong is coinciding the border reopening with a huge surge in Covid-19 infections in the mainland
- After waiting years for quarantine-free travel, surely it can wait just a few more months until cases have peaked
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As Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced the government’s plan to reopen Hong Kong’s border with the mainland, the city was caught unprepared amid the rapid change in Beijing’s Covid-19 policy and the moves by foreign countries to limit the arrival of possible Covid carriers from China.
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While Hong Kong was celebrating the long-awaited announcement of the reopening, Japan imposed restrictions on flights not only from mainland China, but from Hong Kong and Macau. Travellers may now fly from Hong Kong to Japan as before only if they have not visited the mainland in the past seven days.
The United States also issued new requirements for travellers who have been in Hong Kong in the past 10 days to present a negative PCR or antigen test result before boarding their flight.
Travellers and airlines in Hong Kong are the immediate victims of the new regulations. The city’s government can only protest against the decision by Japan and other countries.
Admittedly, this was not an easy situation for anyone to predict. Nevertheless, the Hong Kong government must take prompt action to minimise the impact.
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Hong Kong still faces a severe Covid-19 situation. Last month saw a record-high number of imported cases. Meanwhile, following the relaxation of Covid restrictions in the mainland, the number of cases is also believed to have soared to record highs. Residents on both sides of the border have been scrambling to get pain relief and fever medicine.
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