Coronavirus: Hong Kong bans all passenger flights from Britain in bid to stop mutated strain from reaching city
- Unprecedented ban is an attempt to stop more infectious strain of Covid-19 which has been described as ‘out of control’
- Health officials also say those who arrive ahead of the ban will have to undergo an extra week of quarantine
Health officials said those who arrived ahead of the ban would have to undergo an extra week of quarantine, as experts warned that the city could not afford to let in the mutated virus strain, which was 75 per cent more transmissible.
Hong Kong decided to act after the new coronavirus variant, which British health authorities warned was spreading rapidly and out of control across London and southeast England, left European nations scrambling for a coordinated response.
The ban would leave thousands of students stranded in Britain, unable to return home to Hong Kong for the Christmas and New Year holidays, but the city’s health minister, Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee, said it was a necessary step.
“We have never imposed such stringent measures on a place before,” she said. “But we think that the mutated virus strain in Britain could be coming, menacingly, and we must block the spread in Hong Kong at the source.”
