Call for UK flight ban amid Omicron fears

Wallis Wang

Authorities should consider banning all flights from the United Kingdom as the latest mutant Covid strain Omicron continues to rip through the country, with about 200,000 new cases a day, respiratory expert Leung Chi-chiu said.

This comes as the University of Hong Kong proved the Omicron variant spreads faster than Delta.

Leung yesterday said the authorities should move the UK - which recorded its first Omicron death on Monday - to the A+ category, requiring arrivals to observe a seven-day quarantine at Penny's Bay before moving to quarantine hotels for another 14 days.

Leung said "the pandemic situation in the UK is deteriorating rapidly and they estimate that 200,000 new cases are being recorded every day ... we should realize the risk of UK travelers bringing the virus to the SAR keeps increasing.

"If the risks continue to rise, the government should consider invoking a flight suspension mechanism for the UK."

Leung said it is "too optimistic" to think that the Omicron variant will not enter the local community as it is rapidly spreading across the world.

He added the vaccination rate in Hong Kong is still too low to build herd immunity so if an outbreak occurs, it could be more severe than that in places like South Africa and the UK.

Meanwhile, chairman of the Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases Lau Yu-lung said authorities should not shorten the current six-month period between the second and third Covid-19 jabs as it could lead to chaos in vaccination arrangements.

"If citizens get the booster shot too early, their antibody level will drop to a low level already before they can travel to the mainland," Lau said, adding that Hong Kong and the mainland will not resume cross-border travel on a large scale just yet but that by the end of next year the quota may be boosted to more than 100,000.

Meanwhile, an HKU research team has found that the Omicron variant replicates around 70 times faster in the human bronchus than the original Covid strain and Delta variant.

However, the university added, Omicron replicated over 10 times less efficiently in human lung tissue than the original virus, suggesting lower severity.

Hong Kong yesterday recorded one imported case from Germany - a 46-year-old man who arrived on Monday and carried the L452R mutation present in Delta.

The SAR has so far recorded nine cases involving the Omicron variant.