Hong Kong cuts the required hotel quarantine for overseas travellers from a week to three days, the city's leader John Lee declared on Monday, 8 August 2022.
The Chinese mega-city is still one of the few cities in the world, jointly with mainland China, to force overseas arrivals to a quarantine to safeguard the local population from catching COVID-19. The new guideline taking effect on Friday, 12 August 2022, will be Asia World city's shortest quarantine for overseas arrivals since the covid-19 pandemic began.
The leader of Hong Kong, John Lee, said overseas arrivals must quarantine for 3 days in a specified government hotel and then stay four days under medical surveillance during which their activities will be monitored via the use of a city's health code system.
John Lee further stated that the new guideline of three days in quarantine will be brought into effect after scientific data and proof analysis." We also have to balance the risks against the economic activities and the social lives of (people in) Hong Kong," he said.
"(The data) gives us the indication that the risk factor of people who have finished three days quarantine in a designated hotel ... is no more than the risk level of transmission in society," Lee said.
However, during their week stay in the designated hotel and surveillance, visitors will also have to test regularly for COVID-19, and those who show the sign of Covid symptoms must stay in isolation.
The new guidelines to COVID-19 quarantine policies come despite an upsurge in daily cases, which Hong Kong's health officials warn could double in the coming weeks.