Coronavirus: Hong Kong considers ramping up travel restrictions and placing all arrivals in quarantine to tackle wave of imported cases

Top infectious disease experts call for tougher measures, including banning non-residents flying in from countries the city has issued red travel alerts for

Government says it will start charging people arriving from mainland China HK$200 a day for bed and board in quarantine facilities so system will not be abused

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Mandatory health reporting mechanisms are being unheeded by residents returning to the city, a top Hong Kong microbiologist warned on March 16. Photo: Winson Wong

Elizabeth Cheung,Zoe Low,Karen ZhangandNg Kang-chung

Published: 2:30pm, 16 Mar 2020Updated: 9:22am, 17 Mar 2020

Hong Kong authorities are considering ramping up travel restrictions to place anyone coming into the city under mandatory quarantine orders, as it faces a second wave of imported coronavirus infections from countries lagging behind in controlling their own outbreaks.

Top infectious disease experts on Monday called for tougher measures, from putting all arrivals under self-quarantine to banning non-Hong Kong residents flying in from countries that the city has issued red travel alerts for, even as neighbouring Macau went ahead and announced it would place all travellers from overseas under medical surveillance for two weeks.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government announced that from Tuesday onwards, it would start charging people arriving from mainland China HK$200 (US$25) a day for bed and board in quarantine facilities, so that the system would not be abused.

As the number of Covid-19 cases outside the mainland crossed 89,500, well above the country’s total of 80,860, Hong Kong confirmed nine more cases, taking the city’s tally to 157.

One of the new cases was a 30-year-old man who had recently been in West Africa and Dubai before visiting the Chungking Mansions building and the Kowloon Mosque in Tsim Sha Tsui. The managers of the mosque said it would be closed until further notice as a precaution.

With eight out of nine new cases involving patients who had recently travelled overseas, officials described it as a second wave of infections after initial success in keeping a lid on local infections.