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Shades Off | Has Carrie Lam’s tardiness in closing Hong Kong’s borders condemned me to a holiday on Christmas Island?
- The Hong Kong chief executive’s incremental closing of the border with China has created uncertainty for many travellers as governments around the world shut out arrivals from the city or subject them to quarantines
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Flight bookings I made three months ago are, as it turns out, up in the air. The Hong Kong government’s incremental closing of the border with the mainland has put at risk my chances of taking a break in Australia next week.
If there had been a prompt shutdown to prevent travellers carrying the coronavirus, I, and tens of thousands of other holidaymakers and businesspeople, wouldn’t be facing this uncertainty. But with several countries and airlines having already put in place suspensions, travel plans have been reduced to a matter of wait-and-see.
Many expatriates and foreign passport holders have already made their move, jetting off with their families to greater health certainty and to take advantage of schools being closed until at least March. It’s a sensible thing to do – government ineptitude has ensured Hong Kong is a mess, with office workers often being told to work from home where children are already ruling the roost and panic buying ensuring supermarket shelves have been stripped of rice, cooking oil, toilet paper and other daily necessities.
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Worryingly, the most important of all, face masks, hand sanitiser and alcohol-based hand rub are nowhere to be found at reasonable price, if at all. The pharmacy near my home that is usually stocked to overflowing is now all but bare and a sign at the counter says it all: written in Chinese is the single word “No”. For those able to get away and unaffected by flight cancellations, now is the time.
But some of us have prior bookings and the countdown to those schedules is anxiety-ridden. In my case, questions abound: will my flight be cancelled or can I leave as planned? Living in a densely populated city, where confirmed cases of infection have already been reported and given the possibility that I could have come into contact with an infected person, should I even get on a plane and perhaps spread the virus? Or should I just cancel and go another time?
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Hong Kong, an international city, shouldn’t be leaving so many people in doubt. A fast-thinking, sure-footed government would have responded promptly to the threat of a deadly virus.
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