Govt Urged To Relax Border Restrictions

Executive councillor and Business and Professionals Alliance lawmaker Jeffrey Lam said on Monday that he would push for more exemptions if the government decides to extend quarantine rules for people arriving from the mainland.

The 14-day quarantine requirement regarding people coming into the city from the mainland, where the coronavirus pandemic began, is set to expire on May 7.

Lam said if this measure remains in place after that date, business travellers and those who work on one side of the border but live on the other should be exempted.

He said exceptions could be made for such people, as long as they can provide a health certificate and test negative for Covid-19.

But Civic Party lawmaker and doctor Kwok Ka-ki warned that loosening border controls would attract tens of thousands of visitors from the mainland and the consequences could be disastrous.

He said he is worried Beijing will pressure Hong Kong into dropping the restrictions, even though the mainland is still finding asymptomatic Covid-19 carriers.

"They have these so-called 'invisible carriers', one per 1,000 [inhabitants]. And also they consistently found cases without symptoms throughout April … so we cannot ease any travel restrictions," Kwok said.

The chairman of the Medical Association's advisory committee on communicable diseases, Dr Leung Chi-chiu, said whenever the border controls are loosened, it should be done in a phased manner.

He said different mainland provinces pose different levels of risk, for example Hubei, Guangdong and Heilongjiang are still reporting asymptomatic cases.

Leung said the authorities should first monitor whether the coronavirus situation on the mainland continues to improve after the May Day holiday period.