Coronavirus: Hong Kong leader vows all-out effort to meet mainland China’s mark for reopening border, as ‘model city’ Macau struggles with outbreak

Carrie Lam says government will do everything it can to adjust policies to address mainland China’s concerns in a bid to get border fully reopened

Macau authorities say cluster involving renovation workers has grown to four cases but that it is linked to earlier infections among security guards

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A Macau resident is tested for Covid-19. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 3:16pm, 5 Oct 2021Updated: 11:40pm, 5 Oct 2021

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday vowed to do everything possible to convince mainland China that the city’s Covid-19 control measures would not create a gap in the community’s defences, as pandemic role model Macau ramped up its fight against a growing coronavirus cluster.

Authorities in Macau, touted just last month by mainland officials as a model for Hong Kong to follow on epidemic control measures, announced on Tuesday that a cluster involving renovation workers had grown to four cases but said it was linked to infections among security guards at designated quarantine hotels late last month.

While Hong Kong has not recorded a single local case with unknown sources since mid-August, no significant progress has been made on quarantine-free travel between the city and the mainland. That prompted Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to pledge that her administration would do everything it could to adjust anti-pandemic policies to address mainland concerns in a bid to get the border fully reopened soon.

Macau is dealing with a fresh outbreak of Covid-19. Photo: Xinhua

“For the sake of reopening the border, the city government is willing and determined to improve anything located by our mainland counterparts to make our measures more in line with their standards, or to convince them our anti-epidemic mechanism will not [create] a gap,” Lam said ahead of her weekly meeting with her advisers in the Executive Council.

Her administration was waiting for feedback from mainland experts and would decide the next steps after an internal assessment, she added.

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