IWontRegretThis

Yet... not even the mainland does a 21 day quarentine, ONLY HK and Macao, both of whitch have had single digit imported cases daily for almost the entire pandemic. How can HK continue as a "international" city if both most people are banned from coming AND must fork over $2k+ for a 21 day stay in a hotel, even if they live at home alone? Imagine paying HK rent and almost another months rent for a hotel.

Cambo

I agree about the costs, though these costs are far, far less than a full lock-down.

Or so to say, how to stamp out all those little needles / infection clusters popping up ? There aren't that many options. The 21 quarantine costs are paid by the visitors and are effectively an economic "boost" for the city.

freed0m

if it is essential travel, what’s really $2k+ and 21-day quarantine?

if it is not essential travel, you know.

fakecd

well said

IWontRegretThis

Exactly, my travel is essential and I will end up paying the costs... just silly since I have a solo appt anyways and would be able to isolate there, but I guess ill use it to get my first 21 Marriott nights for the year.

brunos

The hotel quarantine is not likely to be lifted for many, many months.
Lots of people work and reside in HK, but have family (parents, kids) abroad that they have not seen for a year.
Is that "essential travel"?
I guess that this is the situation of most current travellers to/from HK.

freed0m

a little inconvenience for individual, but benefits the society enormously.

think about the potential cost of someone not adhering to strict quarantine.

hermanc

Except none of them are visitors. You have to be a resident to enter Hong Kong...

If 21 days are in fact needed, why is it only now that they do? Almost 10 months after quarantine started? Nobody can tell how many cases were in fact discovered after 14 days...the question was asked and nobody in the gov could answer.

It is clearly a cheeky way for the government to stop people from traveling.

fakecd

whilst this forun attracts expat-like and affluent community participants with roots/family elsewhere, dont forget bulk of grassroots hk seldom travel or their "holiday" is macau or shenzhen if fortunate. for many also who have family in china, or associates in mainland, the max benefit for hk maybe seen as open to china, as opposed to rest of the world.

at least i am supportive of this what appear as non-sense de-facto closure of border if that means sooner we return to "ordinary" life where my kids can go to school or have dinner with family outside. Pandemic isnt permanent, it will slow sometime next year with innoculation program so i rather have "normal" life in HK in exchange for my freedom to travel for another 6-9mths. and if anybody really unhappy, option to leave hk for good is available.

i would say once external flow of people comes under control, china opens up quarantine free. thats milestone HK needs to head to, instead of non sense "bubble" that pleases only the small segment of society

IWontRegretThis

Not sure where you get your data, but HK'ers as a whole are some of the most traveled people out there, https://www.ejinsight.com/eji/articl...bile-always-on and much more data out there. Again, the issue here is this change is NOT backed up by any data - how many cases were caught after the 14 day manditory etc, and why is this only a issue in HK? You would think that if many other countries with strict quarentine were noticing issues with not catchinng it after 14 days, like Australia or NZ, that that data would be out there. The lack of data points to this being a policitical decision, not a health-fact based one.

And I say this as someone who needs travel with the Mainland to open up as well, a good 60% of my business is either mainland derived or with mainland suppliers, before the pandemic the longest I went without a mainland trip was probably less than 60 days.

dannyhk

Well, the top Hong Kong virologists have said its "very likely" the latest outbreak was brought to Hong Kong by a passenger arriving from Nepal, since early infections were 99% identical to a strain found in Nepal (https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...nepal-may-have) and since everyone arriving from Nepal spent 14 days in quarantine, its a reasonable possibility that the latest outbreak was imported into Hong Kong by one of those rare cases who don't test positive until the third week. Agree more data would be helpful though.

fakecd

maybe my point wasnt clear. i am saying govt want to shut hk down from rest of world, like china did. whether or not the 3rd or 4rd or futute 5th wave comes from imported case or frozen food or act of god isnt the point and they don care. what hk leadership want is that hk opens to china, thats only possuble by adopting china first policy. such policy is shutting city down to rest of world (watch what macau did)

hk govt leadership will never openly admit this because hk is supposdly "open international city". Policy adopted, on other hand, is anything but defacto boarder closure as bruno mentioned on other thread there is 300 arrivals a day to hk with 14day quarantine, imagine with 21day).

IWontRegretThis

Very likely does not mean back up by data... just more speculation since they cannot pinpoint the cause. Could have easily been caused by the stupid packed lines they make you wait in while entering the airport, the poorly cleaned overnight government hotel, etc etc.

Visconti

I think I understand.

Mainland has been very effective at corraling and, more or less, bringing this virus under control, as observed by reports of 80% plus of their domestic air traffic returning to normal. HK, like Singapore, is small enough where it's relatively easy to keep potentially infected out, or, at the very least, implement effective qurantines and contract tracing. Before viable vaccines, there really wasn't a good way out of this, aside from natural herd immunity which would have meant being forced to live with this for several years, if not more.

We have the way out now--it's just a matter of time. So, maybe it's better just to keep the virus out (after what we've all been through, another 3 - 6 months of restricitons in order to end this thing isn't entirely without merit), especially if China's domestic economy has recovered, HK may be better off "making ends meet" with the Mainland, rather than the West.

IWontRegretThis

I agree with this in concept, even though it sucks.

Would be nice to see some messaging and or info from the HK gov regarding the vaccines, IE exceptions, how it will be handled when more of the "normal" population can get it, whitch ones might quality etc. As someone who falls under some definitions of "high risk" (pretty bad asthma) I am hoping geting my jab in either HK or the US will enable me at minimum at least to quarentining at home, someone I am totally ok with.