Hong Kong To Lift Flight Ban From India And Eight Other Countries
Hong Kong is set to lift a ban on flights from India and eight other countries from April 1, Chief Executive Carrie Lam was quoted as saying in multiple reports on Monday.
Hong Kong will also reduce the time travellers need to spend in hotel quarantine to seven days if they test negative for Covid-19, a report by Bloomberg said.
The United States, Britain, France and Australia were among the nine countries on the list.
Most social distancing measures and other curbs will remain in place to continue to curb the outbreak, Lam said. The city first will resume dining-in at restaurants for dinner, allowing as many as four people to eat together, and reopen gyms, massage parlors, gyms and public entertainment centers.
Plans for compulsory mass testing for the entire city will be put on pause, Lam said, citing challenges and the stress it would cause. Mass testing needs to be conducted at the start or near the end of a Covid outbreak in order to help eliminate transmission, she said. The government will keep monitoring the situation and consider the mass testing when necessary, she said as per news agency Bloomberg.
Hong Kong reported 246 deaths and 14,149 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Sunday, the lowest daily toll in more than three weeks, down from more than 50,000 a day earlier in the month.
While, Covid cases in India are on a downward trend, several countries have yet again reported a surge in daily Covid cases dominated by the highly infectious Omicron BA.2 variant. As of March 18, 1 in every 20 people in the UK was positive for Covid-19, Reuters reported. The US, among the nine countries from where the flight ban has been lifted by Hong Kong, is expected to see a new surge in the coming weeks as per top medical expert Dr Fauci.
In Asia, China, South Korea are witnessing a surge in cases.
Meanwhile, daily Covid-19 cases in India dropped below the 2000-mark for the 2nd consecutive day. India on Sunday reported 1,549 new cases and 31 deaths in the last 24 hours. India had already announced that it will lift the ban on international flights from March 27.