Coronavirus: Hong Kong Disneyland to lend vacant sites to government for quarantine facilities
- Government has secured consent to use 60-hectare site reserved for the theme park’s expansion, officials say
- Officials have been considering how to bring Hongkongers stranded in Wuhan back ‘in batches”
Hong Kong Disneyland has agreed to lend vacant sites to the government to build coronavirus quarantine facilities, although there was no immediate plan to bring residents stranded in Wuhan back before more units were built, officials said on Friday, confirming an earlier report by the Post.
“We have secured the company’s consent to use part of the site if it is needed,” Commerce and Economic Development Bureau chief Edward Yau Tang-wah said, referring to a 60-hectare plot reserved for the theme park’s expansion on Lantau Island.
“We need all quarantine facilities for surveillance, basically we will leave no stone unturned [when identifying sites for building quarantine facilities],” Yau said at a government press conference.
The government also said, for the first time, that having sufficient quarantine facilities was a condition to bringing back 2,200 Hong Kong residents stranded in Hubei province, the epicentre of the deadly outbreak. Some 10 of them have been confirmed infected with the virus.
“We have already started planning for their return,” said mainland affairs minister Patrick Nip Tak-kuen.