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Hong Kong to lift ban on flights from India, 8 other countries
The finance hub has struggled to maintain China’s zero-Covid policy during an Omicron-fuelled outbreak.
Hong Kong is set to resume international flights from the US, Britain and seven other countries, the government said on Monday as it announced a loosening of some of the world’s toughest Covid-19 restrictions.
The finance hub has struggled to maintain China’s zero-Covid policy during an Omicron-fuelled outbreak.
After the highly transmissible variant fuelled a fresh wave of cases in January, authorities quickly put in place flight bans from eight countries deemed high-risk - including the United States, Britain, France and India - and in February added a ninth, Nepal.
But infections climbed rapidly, with Hong Kong recording more than a million cases and 5,600 deaths, with the bulk of the toll among its unvaccinated elderly population.
On Monday, chief executive Carrie Lam said starting April 1, Hong Kong will lift flight bans - referred to as a “circuit-breaker” - for the nine countries. “The circuit-breaker ... is inopportune now,” she said during a press conference.
“The epidemic situations in those countries are not worse than Hong Kong’s, and most arrivals did not have serious symptoms. To extend the circuit-breaker will add to concerns and anxieties of Hong Kong residents stranded there.”
The quarantine period for vaccinated arrivals will also be reduced to seven days in a designated hotel, followed by another seven days of at-home monitoring - though Lam did not specify what date the change will begin.
Disney resort shut amid record cases in Shanghai
China’s financial hub of Shanghai reported on Monday a record daily surge in local Covid-19 infections as authorities scrambled to test residents and rein in the Omicron variant, while closing its Disney resort until further notice.
Until recent weeks relatively unscathed by coronavirus, Shanghai reported 24 new domestically transmitted Covid cases with confirmed symptoms for Sunday and 734 local asymptomatic infections, official data showed on Monday.
It is the fourth consecutive day that Shanghai’s local asymptomatic infections have increased.
WHO sounds alarm on tuberculosis fight funds
The world is spending nowhere near enough to revive the fight against tuberculosis after the Covid-19 crisis wiped out years of progress, the WHO said on Monday.
Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day on Thursday, the World Health Organization said global spending on TB diagnostics, treatments and prevention in 2020 was less than half of the global target of $13 billion annually by 2022. “TB remains one of the world’s deadliest infectious killers. Each day, over 4,100 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease,” the WHO said.
