Spooked by pandemic situation: Hong Kong’s compulsory Covid-19 testing, tough rules push some expatriates to leave

News of British mum separated from baby in hospital alarms expatriate families with young children

Those eager to leave are finding it hard to get flights, prices of air tickets have shot up too

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Cathay Pacific airplanes at Hong Kong International Airport. There have been fewer flights out of Hong Kong since the pandemic began. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 8:00am, 25 Feb 2022Updated: 1:55pm, 26 Feb 2022

After 11 years of calling Hong Kong home, real estate business owner Jack Smith* is making plans to leave the city as soon as he can get a flight out.

The 29-year-old Briton said he felt fatigued after three years which saw the city go through anti-government protests in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic arrived and closed it off from the rest of the world.

But the last straw came this week, when the government announced compulsory Covid-19 testing for the entire 7.4 million population as it battled the city’s exploding fifth wave of infections.

The Briton said the pandemic situation and compulsory testing were “absurd”. He had been planning to move to Berlin at the end of next month, but was now scrambling to get a ticket out next week.

He is not alone. There were 27,303 departures in the week ending February 20, a fifth more than the previous week and the highest weekly net outflow since the pandemic began. Most left from the airport, with the rest going via two crossings to mainland China.

One Facebook group for people considering leaving swelled to more than 2,000 members since it was created on Tuesday.

For expatriates, Hong Kong’s “dynamic zero infections” approach against the coronavirus has meant not only strict social-distancing rules, but also tight travel restrictions that prevented many from seeing their families for two years.