Quarantine has been set at 14 days from the very first days of Covid-19, despite the fact that very little was known at that time. Is it logical that it has not been adjusted despite nine months’ experience and huge amounts of information known about the disease? Hong Kong probably has the most (and best) data worldwide from the hundreds of thousands of arrivals at the airport who have all been tested, quarantined and monitored. Surely we must now know how many people tested negative on arrival but were subsequently infected, after the second, third, fourth or more days. Hong Kong should be in a position to accurately assess the risk of reducing the quarantine period to five, seven, 10 or 12 days, or even the need to extend it. Now is a good time to make decisions based on acceptable risk levels rather than taking the safe option of eliminating any level of risk, otherwise we will never make progress. If the risk is immaterial after a certain number of days, let’s make the changes and let Hong Kong lead the world based on facts and not unproven guesses. Mike Bishop, Clear Water Bay In era of online learning, digital divide must be bridged I am writing with reference to the report “ Covid-19 won’t last forever, but online learning here to stay, former Hong Kong finance chief says in predicting ‘new normal’ for education ” (October 27). It is true that Covid-19 has halted much of face-to-face learning and accelerated the use of technology in education. Such technology has been available for years. However, schools seldom use it. Therefore, in the early stage of the pandemic, many schools were not prepared to fully switch to online teaching. But this has changed over the past few months. While online learning has many benefits, it has shown up the digital divide – many low-income families did not have the required electronic devices or Wi-fi at home. Now, with school closures on the horizon once again (“ Hong Kong educators complain about lack of clarity over class suspensions sparked by respiratory infection outbreaks ”, November 19), the government needs to step up and not only provide needy families with the devices needed for online learning, but also look into providing free Wi-fi. This would not be very hard or expensive to do. Moreover, if online learning is the new normal, the government should be providing schools with more resources to facilitate it. We can expect the advancement of educational technology and the future of education to be blended learning, which combines online and face-to-face lessons for students. Alvin Wong, Tseung Kwan O