Hong Kong imposes a health code/medical surveillance on arrivals and returnees to the city (and cuts hotel quarantine by a few days)

Message from a hungry soul in a Hong Kong quarantine hotel!

 

At dinner last Friday, one of my friends mentioned that she's going out of Hong Kong on a business trip later this month while the other said he's planning to go on holiday outside of the territory for the first time in around three years.  Talk of their looking forward to these trips quickly segued to their trepidation with regards to dealing with what's involved in returning to Hong Kong: which includes the difficulty of booking flights (with many flight routes suspended still) and a room in a quarantine hotel (with even hospitality industry veterans experiencing problems) but also the experience of passing through the airport on the way home and quarantining for seven days in said quarantine hotel.   

 

I wonder if my friends breathed sighs of relief today upon hearing that, as per a Hong Kong Free Press report, "Hong Kong will cut its hotel quarantine duration for incoming arrivals to three days from Friday onwards, following weeks of government officials and experts teasing of a loosening to the city’s stringent Covid-19 travel rules."  And I did have another friend, who's currently abroad, excitedly message me about how happy she was to get this news.

If truth be told though, I think that those celebrating this news announcement have a spot of Stockholm syndrome.  Travel writer Lee Cobaj (who goes by Goose Lee on Twitter) put it well with the following Tweeted reaction: "HOORAY! I feel like celebrating while also being aware that I've been Patty Hearst'd by this ridiculous government. Three days quarantine is still nOT NOrMal and won't help with tourism".  And law professor Stuart Hargreaves backed her up by Tweeting that " 3+4 is obviously better in a relative sense, but HK cannot be a city of any international consequence or significance until the mandatory hotel quarantine number is a big fat 0. It's been almost 3 years now."   

 

More than by the way: "3 + 4" is the equation being bandied around by most media covering it -- following the Hong Kong government's announcement that the new rules now involves "3 days hotel quarantine plus 4 days home medical surveillance".  But as a careful observer pointed out, "note it's actually 4+4, as the first day is no longer day one but day zero" (i.e., not counted in the "three days hotel quarantine" part of the equation).  

 

Still, the bigger problem and issue lies in the second part of the equation: i.e., that of surveillance.  And no, I don't care that the word "medical" is in front of it!  More specifically, and "importantly, the city will introduce a mainland-style health code system to prevent recent inbound travelers and positive cases moving around".  

 

More details from the previously mentioned Hong Kong Free Press article: "After three [or is it actually four?  See above!]  days of hotel quarantine, arrivals will need to complete four days of self-monitoring at home. They will be given a yellow code that will restrict them from accessing businesses including restaurants, bars, gyms and beauty salons.  They will be allowed to take public transport, go to work, and enter shopping malls, department stores and other premises."

 

And while the plan currently is for it to apply "only" for people arriving/newly returning to Hong Kong and for "just" a few days, how long before it's extended to the general populace and for much longer?  Also, how much longer before it gets turned into a Mainland Chinese-style social code (AKA social credit system)?  And yeah, we've heard official assurances that it won't be extended to Hong Kong -- but that was back in July 2019; at a time when few folks, if anyone, thought that Beijing would impose China's national security law on Hong Kong!

 

One more thing: why is Hong Kong still requiring any days of hotel quarantine for even returning residents when much of the rest of the world doesn't?  And when Hong Kong has had far more new local Covid cases daily (3,807 today) than imported ones (236 today)?!

 

It really can feel like Hong Kongers are being gaslit when Secretary for Health, Lo Chung-mau, says things like this health code and quarantine reduction is being implemented "to maintain Hong Kong's competitiveness".  I'll leave it to a travel writer to point out the following: "People can literally choose to to go to another 170-odd countries/territories with no covid entry restrictions at all".  And that the overall message to people here in Hong Kong appears to be: "Be grateful we're making it slightly easier for you to travel. All you have to do is sacrifice some more of your human rights."

 

Why oh why are the media not making a bigger deal of this?  To be sure, it's because some outlets -- the vast majority of those local ones that remain (with the likes Apple Daily, Stand News and Citizen News being no more), at the very least -- are pro-government/Beijing.  But what gives with the international media?  My only conclusion is that those of their staffers based in Hong Kong have fallen prey to Stockholm syndrome too.  As Charles Mok, the former pro-democrat IT sector legislative councillor who's now no longer in Hong Kong noted just a couple of days ago: "Gradually, people get used to being under a police state. That's the purpose of it all." :(