Chinese Experts Arrive in Hong Kong to Review Covid Measures
Chinese Experts Arrive in Hong Kong to Review Covid Measures
(Bloomberg) -- A delegation of Chinese health experts has arrived in Hong Kong to review the city’s Covid-19 measures, as part of its bid to resume quarantine-free travel with the mainland.
Epidemic prevention and control specialists from China’s National Health Commission, as well as from Guangdong Province and the cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, are in Hong Kong until Tuesday, according to a government statement published Saturday evening. They will visit epidemic-related facilities and speak with “relevant personnel,” the statement said. The top two Chinese official agencies in Hong Kong -- the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and the China Liaison Office -- will also be represented.
The four-day visit comes after months of negotiations between Beijing and Hong Kong, which has prioritized reopening the border with China before anywhere else. China and Hong Kong are maintaining strict quarantine systems and a zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 -- a strategy that has kept cases low but left them isolated as the rest of the world opens up.
Neither Beijing or Hong Kong have so far given a date for reopening the border. However the South China Morning Post reported earlier this week that restrictions may begin to ease in early December, with an initial daily quota of a few hundred.
Hong Kong will continue to “strengthen and put forward various anti-epidemic measures” to “foster favorable conditions” for the resumption of quarantine-free travel “in a gradual and orderly manner,” the statement cited Chief Secretary John Lee as saying.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.