Letters | If Hong Kong is serious about quarantine, offer enough hotel rooms
- Readers crunch hotel quarantine numbers, discuss school bullying and adult mindfulness, and suggest the West try asking China nicely to help end the Ukraine war
The government measures to “streamline” procedures for entry to Hong Kong throw into stark relief the incompetence of our administration. On the one hand, press releases trumpet a seemingly impressive number of 23,000 quarantine hotel rooms, but on the other hand, is anybody doing the maths? If each of these 23,000 rooms is occupied for seven days, it means in any month, just 4.3 incoming travellers can be accommodated per room. This comes to just shy of 100,000 people, or if we allow that maybe 30 per cent are occupied by couples, then 130,000 people.
I get regular updates from Cathay Pacific Airways saying it is increasing flights to Hong Kong but really, what’s the point – the limiting factor is the quarantine hotel situation.
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Hong Kong’s John Lee flags a possible review of hotel quarantine rules when he takes office
And then there are situations such as my own, where having caught and recovered from Covid-19 outside Hong Kong, I failed the pre-return PCR test, so had to cancel my precious quarantine hotel booking. I am now looking at up to two months of limbo before I might be able to get through the front doors of my home.