Opinion | How the untold story of quarantine monitoring has taken Hong Kong closer to winning the Covid-19 fight

With limited places available in quarantine facilities, many people have been served stay-at-home orders that could not have worked without a group of people dedicated to improving the tracking gadgets and monitoring that quarantines are observed

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An air passenger boards a shuttle bus after leaving a temporary coronavirus testing centre set up for arriving passengers in Hong Kong. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:30am, 24 Apr 2020Updated: 10:55am, 24 Apr 2020

Hong Kong’s fight against the Covid-19 virus has so far largely been a success. Several major international media outlets have recently recognised this. They are especially impressed by the way the community has accepted a range of social distancing measures.

No government could have been totally prepared, and inevitably some local people are more critical of the Hong Kong administration’s response. This especially applies to the approach to inbound travellers.

The first restrictions were imposed on non-residents from Hubei in late January. The rules were toughened over the following weeks, and now only Hong Kong residents and a few Macau, Taiwan and mainland residents may enter, and all must undergo home or other quarantine.

I hear several questions in particular. Why do we not put all these arrivals into special quarantine facilities? Why do we not have tighter monitoring of these people? And why have we not been testing everyone on arrival?

These are fair questions. The reason most inbound travellers are quarantined at home is simple: the government has nowhere else to put them. Since February 4, around 140,000 people have been quarantined. At any given time, that’s tens of thousands.