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Hong Kong faces challenge in plan to evacuate residents from Hubei amid shortage of quarantine facilities
- Only about 700 quarantine places are remaining, while thousands of Hongkongers are still stranded in mainland China’s Hubei
- Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Patrick Nip says the government should plan facilities before embarking on evacuation plans
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Hong Kong’s quarantine facilities have only about 700 places left, a top official said on Sunday, as the government faces the challenge of evacuating later this month some of the 3,400 city residents stranded in Hubei.
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Patrick Nip Tak-kuen, secretary for constitutional and mainland affairs, said the government was planning to arrange flights later this month to bring home 500 to 600 Hongkongers stranded in Hubei in mainland China, the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, four government-chartered flights flew home 469 city residents from there.
“When they return to Hong Kong, we need to send them to quarantine centres. But now, only about 700 places are available,” Nip said on a television talk show on Sunday.
“We also need to reserve enough places to handle certain emergency scenarios.”
He cited as an example the evacuation from at least 10 households at a Hong Kong public housing estate on Saturday, after three residents in one of its blocks were found to be infected with Covid-19. Two of the three infected were part of a tour group that recently visited Egypt. Every member of the tour group has been infected with the deadly virus.
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