Coronavirus: ‘better than nothing’ to cut hotel quarantine from a week to 4 days for travellers between Hong Kong and mainland China

President Xi Jinping doubled down on ‘zero-Covid’ approach in his speech making it highly unlikely that quarantine will be entirely scrapped

Cutting hotel quarantine would increase number of people crossing border each day, says the city’s sole delegate to state’s top legislative body

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Cutting hotel quarantine from seven days to four for travellers going to mainland China will be better than nothing, say business and community leaders. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 7:25pm, 16 Oct 2022Updated: 9:01pm, 16 Oct 2022

Cutting cross-border quarantine from a week to four days would be a “better than nothing” arrangement for businesses and families travelling between Hong Kong and mainland China, observers have said.

Business and community leaders, who have been hoping for the scrapping of quarantine measures, were responding to a possible policy change raised by Tam Yiu-chung on Saturday, the city’s sole delegate to the state’s top legislative body.

Sector representatives noted that completely scrapping hotel quarantine would be against the mainland’s “zero-Covid” approach, after President Xi Jinping doubled down on the policy in his speech at the 20th party congress on Sunday.

Travellers with suitcases lining up for Covid-19 PCR test at Shenzhen Bay Port in Hong Kong. Photo: Dickson Lee

Tam, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, acknowledged the intense speculation swirling around whether Beijing would ease measures that had largely crippled cross-border travel for more than two years after the Chinese Communist Party ended its twice-in-a-decade congress later this month.

He also pointed out the average three days that most mutated strains of Covid-19 take to incubate.

He said if the measures went through, there would be more vacancies at quarantine hotels allowing them to serve more travellers, which in turn would allow for an increase in the number of people crossing the border each day.

Business sector lawmaker Jeffrey Lam Kin-fung, a member of the Executive Council, highlighted Xi’s congress speech in which the president listed “zero-Covid” as one of the party’s achievements in protecting lives.