Top Hong Kong adviser "very optimistic" city will open up within year

A top adviser to Hong Kong’s leader is “very optimistic” the city will reopen to the world within the next year and said shortening Covid-19 quarantines for inbound travelers is the government’s next objective. 

“I’m very hopeful as more data shows the omicron variant’s incubation period is actually much shorter, that perhaps we can aim for a shorter quarantine time,” Bernard Chan, a financier and convener of Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s advisory Executive Council, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Wednesday.  

“You know, that’s probably the next objective,” he added, referencing inbound travel restrictions. “We all want to end this thing as soon as we can.” 

When asked if Hong Kong could reopen to the world within the next year, Chan said once the city had a “fully vaccinated community” and a better knowledge of omicron he was “very optimistic” it could meet that target. 

Hong Kong has some of the world’s strictest border controls that require incoming vaccinated residents to quarantine for as long as 14 days, while flight bans are still in place on eight countries including the U.S. and the U.K. Chan said the government receives complaints about its lengthy quarantine rules on an almost “hourly basis.” 

As cities like Singapore and London open up and adjust to living with the virus, the rules put Hong Kong at risk of losing its edge as a financial hub. High-ranking executives at top banks are among those stuck outside the city due to travel bans, while companies say they’re having difficulty hiring from overseas. 

Nevertheless, the government has re-iterated its commitment to the China-aligned Covid Zero strategy. On Tuesday, Lam announced Hong Kong’s strictest social distancing curbs since the pandemic began, including limits of private gatherings, after the city reported a record 625 new infections.  

No city has ever quashed an outbreak of this size without months in full lockdown. 

Chan, however, ruled out Hong Kong orchestrating a city-wide, China-style lockdown to stem the current outbreak of the highly transmissible omicron variant. “I don’t think we can ever go into a full lockdown,” he said. “We just can’t do it in Hong Kong. We cannot have the same sort of lockdown that you see in the mainland.”    

Getting 90 percent of residents vaccinated is crucial to easing restrictions, Chan said, stopping short of saying whether reaching that goal would be the trigger that allows the city to ease its border controls. Currently, just 73.2 percent of residents have received their first dose, according to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker.  

Chan dismissed concerns that the Covid-19 vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd., one of the most widely used in the world and one of two shots offered in Hong Kong, does not provide adequate protection against omicron.  

“I mean some are more effective than others probably for less severe illness,” he said, “but all vaccines so far that have been approved by the Hong Kong government are effective enough to protect you from death.” 

(Bloomberg)