A traveller takes anti-infection precautions at Hong Kong International Airport.Travellers arriving in Hong Kong from any foreign country from Thursday will be put under home quarantine, the city’s leader has said, as she extended a red travel alert to cover all overseas nations.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor noted on Tuesday that the coronavirus outbreak had become a pandemic, and the total number of infections abroad had exceeded the total in China.
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She said that in the previous two weeks, Hong Kong had recorded 57 new infections, 50 of them imported.
“If we exclude these imported cases, we only have seven local cases in the past week,” she said.
“But if we do not impose strict measures, our previous efforts could be wasted.”
She added that the new restrictions would not apply to arrivals from mainland China, Macau or Taiwan. While Taiwan is a self-governing island, Beijing considers it part of the country.