Travellers Welcome Improved Quarantine Arrangments

Long queues formed at Shenzhen Bay Port on Friday with people waiting to enter the mainland after quarantine arrangements were improved for cross-boundary travel.

The control point's operating hours have been extended to between 9am and 8pm.

Officials have also increased the daily quota of quarantine units on the mainland for Hongkongers crossing the border, from 1,300 to 2,000.

A separate "care corridor" has been set up for people in need, such as those aged 70 or above, who will not take up the 2,000 daily quota. But it is unclear how many isolation rooms have been set aside for this pathway.

A woman surnamed Wong was among many who had not been able to visit their relatives on the mainland for two years.

She said the increased daily quota for hotel quarantine made it easier for her to travel back.

Another traveller, surnamed Keung, said he's just happy to be seeing his family.

Still, the DAB party said it understood that people had to wait for around an hour to undergo Covid screening at the border, and up to three more hours for test results to come back.

One of its lawmakers, Edward Leung, said the government can do more to ease overcrowding at the border.

"They have to increase the capacity for the [PCR] tests at the Hong Kong border, on our side, and also, we would like to advocate that the government could provide different time slots for people to sign up, so that they do not have to [gather] in the morning, and they can go [to the border] in the afternoon, also late afternoon," Leung said.

The DAB also repeated its calls for a "reverse quarantine", where people travelling from Hong Kong to mainland would isolate in the SAR first before crossing the border under a closed-loop arrangement.