Exclusive | Coronavirus: Hong Kong border with mainland China to fully reopen to quarantine-free travel by June at latest, official sources say
- Reopening had ‘received the attention of the top Chinese leaders’ and all sides ‘working hard to make it happen’, one insider says
- Hong Kong on Monday confirms no new Covid-19 cases for the first time in nearly a month
Hong Kong’s land border with mainland China will reopen fully to quarantine-free travel by June at the latest, official sources have revealed, signalling a significant breakthrough after months of the city’s intense lobbying to fight the debilitating impact of the checkpoint closures on its economy.
One insider based in Beijing said the reopening had now “received the attention of the top Chinese leaders” and all sides were “working hard to make it happen”.
The full border reopening, which sources said could happen earlier than June if all goes smoothly, would cap a three-step plan starting in mid-December.
The scheme would entail a small pilot programme involving daily quotas to be followed by an expansion in February to allow “mass events”, a source said, reaffirming what city leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor had suggested last week.
And by June, several of the 10 land checkpoints would fully reopen, enabling a set number of people to cross every day without being subjected to quarantine, provided they met certain conditions.
The plan would start with travellers entering the mainland via Shenzhen. Discussions on resuming air travel had not begun, the source said.
A spokesman for the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office confirmed last Thursday that both sides had reached “significant consensus” over reopening the border.