Coronavirus: halve Hong Kong quarantine for fully vaccinated arrivals from medium-risk countries, government advisers say
- Researchers separately tell Post that source of infection last week involving variant could remain a mystery after failed genome sequencing matches
- City confirms four new cases on Wednesday, all imported
Fully vaccinated travellers to Hong Kong from medium-risk countries should have their quarantine period cut to seven days upon testing positive for coronavirus antibodies, government scientific advisers have recommended.
Two scientific committees under the Centre for Health Protection raised the travel advice after a meeting on Wednesday, and gave their backing to lowering the vaccination age threshold to 12, a move authorities had said would kick in later this month.
The experts also renewed guidelines deeming full-day, in-person classes safe for schools with a 70 per cent vaccination rate, and declared it suitable for the elderly in care homes who have had flu shots to receive Covid-19 jabs.
The policy suggestions were passed to officials for consideration as Hong Kong confirmed four new coronavirus infections, all imported, from Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Austria. The new cases brought the official tally to 11,872, with 210 related deaths.
Fewer than five people tested preliminary-positive.
Meanwhile, researchers told the Post the source of a variant Covid-19 infection last week that snapped Hong Kong’s 42-day streak of zero untraceable cases could remain a mystery, after a failed bid to match tens of thousands of local and worldwide virus genomes.