Coronavirus: Hong Kong restaurant owners scramble to cope with government’s U-turn on dine in, as workers are allowed to have lunch indoors
- Government opens at least one community hall in every district for people to have lunch, while churches also offer workers place to eat
- Restaurant owners slam authorities’ dine-in ban as a ‘failed surgery by an incompetent doctor’
Hong Kong restaurant operators could barely cope with the government’s U-turn on social-distancing rules as workers across the city were offered access to indoor lunch amid a heatstroke warning on Thursday.
More churches voluntarily offered workers to dine in with their takeaway as the government had earlier imposed a ban on all-day dine-in services for a week from yesterday to contain a worsening third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, noticing the plight of workers on Wednesday, the government has decided to restore dine-in services at eateries between 5am and 5.59pm from Friday.
Industry body Institute of Dining Art chairman Ray Chui Man-wai described the government’s policies on eateries as a “failed surgery by an incompetent doctor”.
“The policy to ban dine-ins at restaurants is like the act of a sloppy doctor, who made incisions on a patient, but at the wrong place. The doctor ended up accidentally stabbing the heart of the patient, and killed the patient.”