Coronavirus: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says total border shutdown with mainland China discriminatory, but will ramp up quarantine measures

Hong Kong’s beleaguered government on Friday rejected public calls for a total shutdown of the city’s borders to protect it from the deadly coronavirus that originated in mainland China, claiming it would be discriminatory, but promised to ramp up immigration restrictions by placing anyone returning from the stricken Hubei province under quarantine.

Instead, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor urged local residents to avoid travel to the mainland, given that 37,000 of them had made cross-border journeys just the day before, but she noted that the World Health Organisation had not advised travel and trade restrictions for China even though it declared a global emergency over the pneumonia-like illness that first broke out in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

In the face of mounting fears that the local government was not doing enough to stop the virus that is confirmed to have infected at least 13 people in Hong Kong and killed more than 210 on the mainland, Lam said anyone who had been to Hubei would be placed under quarantine, whether they showed symptoms or not, and her government would study the use of devices for tracking people asked to isolate themselves at home as a precaution.

“When they enter the city, they need to contact health officers ... and they will be required to stay at our quarantine centres,” she said, adding that home confinement would be considered if the current 90 living spaces at holiday camps repurposed as quarantine centres were used up.