Editorial | Hong Kong must stay cautious at it starts to ease travel restrictions

Hong Kong has adopted an approach to travel during Covid-19 that is very different to that of much of the West, to the frustration of many residents. European authorities, for example, allow relatively free movement subject to full vaccination verified by special passports. Hong Kong has adhered to a more conservative line akin to the mainland China model, with emphasis on vaccination and limited travel. This week it loosened up a little by overhauling its rules and streamlining country risk ratings.

This will allow more fully vaccinated residents stranded overseas, including students, to return home along with foreign domestic helpers and businesspeople wanting to come in. It can be expected to bring about the lifting of flight bans on Britain, India, Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines, among others. On compassionate grounds, relief for stranded students in particular is to be commended. To some, the liberalisation is a welcome move, however small, towards living with the virus and resuming a normal life. The government, rightly, has not resiled from vaccination as the way back to normal life. However, the mandating of jabs for all civil servants, care home and public hospital employees and school staff, unless they want to pay for regular Covid-19 tests, is a radical step that has raised questions.

To some of the government’s medical advisers, the lifting of flight bans from high-risk countries is fraught with the increased risk of importing infection through airline crews, which could jeopardise a streak of 57 days without a locally acquired case. The current mainland outbreak of the more transmissible Delta variant, which began in Nanjing when a cleaner became infected while cleaning a cargo plane from Russia, does nothing to ease such concerns. The authorities should give full weight to their advisers’ worries.

That said, the changes announced by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor are cautious, following a sustained period of low daily infections brought in from overseas. The government does not want to jeopardise its overriding goal – reopening of the border with the mainland. There is to be a three-tier quarantine regime, with vaccinated arrivals from high-risk countries still facing 21 days in a designated hotel, and unvaccinated travellers facing an extra seven days of isolation. Generally, Hong Kong will recognise only jabs given here or on the mainland, including for domestic helpers.

Mandatory vaccination for civil servants and public-sector workers raises the question which group may be next. Some others arguably have more contact with the public. There is an argument that the public sector should set an example. That does not mean the authorities should pressure everyone to get the jab, rather than rely on persuasion, even if it remains a socially responsible thing to do.