Mainland Curbs To Stay As Situation 'very Fluid': CE

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday that she is not considering lifting quarantine requirements for arrivals from the mainland at this point even though such a move may be justified as Beijing reports next to no domestic cases of Covid-19.

For days now mainland authorities have announced just a trickle of new coronavirus patients, involving people arriving in the country from overseas, and no new infections have even been reported for a week in Wuhan, where the devastating pandemic began.

Before heading into this week's Executive Council meeting, Lam said there is now a "very, very low" number of new coronavirus cases on the mainland, but the situation there is "very fluid".

"There may be some justification for relaxing some of the control requirements, but my reply is no. For the time being, we have no plans to loosen any of the controls being put on arrivals from the mainland. The situation is very fluid, it may still change," she said.

"After all these control measures... closure of border control points... imposition of the 14-day quarantine, not only with the mainland but also now with Macau, we are seeing a significant drop in the number of arrivals, whether they are Hong Kong residents or non-Hong Kong residents coming in from the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge as well as the Shenzhen Bay control point. So there isn't a huge need for relaxing the border control points."

Lam also noted that the quarantine rules for mainland arrivals are set to expire in May.

"Even if we do nothing, by early May this regulation will lose its effectiveness and then we will be able to resume some of the traffic flow without this 14-day quarantine requirement," she said.

The CE also said that new measures aimed at curbing gatherings of people in Hong Kong appear to be working well so far.

She said police officers have been giving out verbal warnings since new rules limiting gatherings to a maximum of four people came into effect on Sunday, but they may soon give offenders fines instead.

People convicted of flouting the new rules, which are to last until April 11, are liable to a fine of up to HK$25,000 and six months in prison.