Govt To Ban Night-time Dine In, Close More Venues

Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Tuesday announced a ban on dine-in services at restaurants after 6pm and ordered the closure of venues including gyms and beauty salons as the fourth wave of Covid-19 shows no sign of abating.

Speaking before the weekly Executive Council meeting, Lam did not say when the measures would be implemented, adding that more details would be confirmed later.

Sports venues and massage parlours will also be among the venues forced to close. More civil servants will be told to work from home.

Lam said the new measures were intended to further reduce the number of people going out.

Meanwhile, the CE admitted that the government didn't act quickly enough to introduce a new law that would give health officials the power to seal off areas hit by Covid-19 and carry out mandatory testing.

She was commenting on an outbreak at a public housing block in Kwai Shing West Estate, where more than a dozen residents have been infected.

Other people living on the fifth floor of the building have been taken to a quarantine centre, but some had already fled their homes because of the infections.

Lam said a new law will be introduced soon to tackle any similar situations in the future.

"If we could speed up the making of a particular piece of legislation, which we will do today in the Executive Council, my colleagues in the public health authorities will have a better legal basis to tackle that situation. So that is the thing that we could have done better," she said.

"But I hope you realise that we're in a hectic situation since this wave hit us in the latter part of November. Secondly, in a city like Hong Kong, even in a public health emergency, we attach a lot of importance to the rule of law. So every act of the public health authorities has to be based on the legal provisions."

The chief executive also noted that the current wave of infections is more complicated than the last as the cases are distributed more broadly and involve many clusters.

She also warned people in different age groups to stay vigilant as figures show more young patients are critically and seriously ill.