Hong Kong relaxing pandemic restrictions after backlash

Hong Kong announced Monday that it will relax pandemic restrictions including flight bans on certain countries and quarantine time for travelers amid intense backlash.

The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, said Hong Kong will ease restrictions on flights from nine countries — including Australia, Canada, France, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the U.S. — from April 1, The Associated Press reported. 

And travelers to the city will only be required to quarantine for seven days, down from 14 days. But the shorter isolation period applies only if visitors test negative for the virus on the sixth and seventh days of their quarantine — and travelers are still required to be fully vaccinated.

Hong Kong ramped up its COVID-19 restrictions after a drastic increase in COVID-19 cases at the start of the year due to the omicron variant, which has forced the island to adapt its zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic.

Lam announced last week that the city will not go into full lockdown despite tens of thousands of daily cases, and also canceled plans to test all 7 million residents.

The city largely avoided mass infections early in the pandemic, but has registered the most deaths per million people globally in recent weeks, in part because of a large elderly population who were largely unvaccinated, Reuters reported. 

Since the pandemic began in 2020, Hong Kong has recorded more than a million infections and about 6,000 deaths — most of them in the past month.