HKG overnight transit during COVID-19 Lockdowns
 

Due to a schedule change, I now have an overnight layover (16 hours) in HKG for a flight at the end of October. What are the transit procedures for overnight transit? Will I have to stay in the terminal or can I check into a hotel?

I'm a US citizen if that enters into the equation.

I would avoid transit at HKG for the moment, especially given that you are mostly a Do Not Admit.

It is very likely that you need to stay in the terminal.

Yeah you're not allowed to enter HKG so you need to stay in the Terminal.

But the flight is the end of October.
Certainly the US will be on the list for low risk countries right:D

Low or high risk will not make a difference in terms of transit. Nor does your citizenship (as long as you are allowed entry at your destination).

A current difference is that anyone who has visited or transited through a high-risk country must submit a recent covid test before boarding a flight to HK.

Asian countries take a different approach, that is to eliminate infection, so they are more cautious on border control and 'travel bubbles'. There are a few countries proposing travel bubbles, such as Australia-New Zealand, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong etc, but almost all the plans are on hold since we get the second wave or third wave. Therefore, for Asian countries, almost all foreign countries are 'high-risk' places.

Simply speaking, we won't see the previous world before effective vaccines have been taken by the population.

"A current difference is that anyone who has visited or transited through a high-risk country must submit a recent covid test before boarding a flight to HK."

According to the Government website setting out the rules for travellers from High-Risk Countries, "A person who is in transit in Hong Kong, and a person exempted by the Chief Secretary for Administration from compulsory quarantine under section 4(1) of either the Compulsory Quarantine of Certain Persons Arriving at Hong Kong Regulation (Cap. 599C) or Compulsory Quarantine of Persons Arriving at Hong Kong from Foreign Places Regulation (Cap. 599E) will not be affected."

https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/h...sk-places.html

Interesting, I missed that.
So a person flying from the US to Philippines (or vice versa) can board without any test.
Not very safe from the perspective of pax and crew.

"Not very safe from the perspective of pax and crew."

"Not very safe" is the usual exaggeration of the risk the virus poses. Not much different than the risk anyone flying from the U.S. or the Philippines faces just being out and moving around in the U.S. or the Philippines.

I haven't seen any sources showing there's a higher risk aboard an aircraft. Indeed, while there have been several cases of flyers testing positive on arrival in Hong Kong, I don't recall one single case where a fellow passenger tested positive a few days later.

There has ben many cases. Lots of them. That's why they require quarantine on top of test on arrival

Can you provide some data supporting those cases: "lots of them" as you say. The Government puts out a lot of information regarding detected infections, and I don't recall any highlighting passengers who shared an aircraft with an infected passenger and five days or so later developed Covid. There have been around 600 cases of infection detected when testing asymptomatic arrivals (air and land), so if this were a serious risk you'd expect quite a large number of fellow passengers to have become infected.

As well, since you're familiar with the numbers, do you know how many of the 100,000 or so travellers who've undergone two-weeks' quarantine developed infection during quarantine? And at what point in quarantine did they develop infection? Those are key points to understanding the effectiveness of mandatory quarantine.

Just what is needed, another loophole permitting transit at HKIA from one high-risk country to another.

Interesting that there are still many MNL +ve arrivals even with the "certified -ve test" 72 hrs before departure to HKG.

There was a Wall Street Journal article about transmission risk on planes. The link is here (paywall): https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gre...ly-11594824268

The key extract relevant to this discussion of certain testing requirements:

actually from what I read, these positive cases from Philippines detected these few days are only detected during the swab test done on day 10 of the quarantine. So there is still risk of infection.