Ho: Macau cannot ‘lie flat and co-exist with Covid-19’

Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng has once again rejected the idea of co-existence with Covid-19 in Macau, despite it becoming a trend in more places around the world.

He attributed the impossibility to border normalization between Macau and mainland China. He warned that weakening Covid-19 prevention and control policies in Macau could affect the travel of people in Macau visiting mainland China.

Currently, people in Macau are not quarantined upon entry to the mainland.

Elaborating on the matter, he reiterated that Macau cannot “lie flat”. The term is widely used in mainland China to describe the attitude to reject societal pressures to overwork.

It was not the first time the head of the local government had generalized a media question on co-existence with Covid-19 to the “lie-flat” attitude.

At the press conference, Ho rhetorically questioned the willingness of people in Macau to be quarantined upon entry to mainland China, to prove mainland residents would not want to be quarantined when visiting Macau.

Neighboring Hong Kong will adopt the zero-day mandatory quarantine policy, boosting airfares and visits to airline websites nearly immediately upon announcement of the policy. In the past two years or so, Hong Kong and mainland China have not been under border normalization.

At a previous parliamentary session, Ho blamed the local tourism industry for over-focusing on the mainland market in the past two decades or so, before urging the industry to turn its focus to foreign visitors.

With quarantine-free travel being adopted in many places, mandatory quarantine is increasingly unattractive to international travelers. Macau currently only accepts foreigners from 41 countries and is implementing a seven-day mandatory quarantine period on all entrants from outside mainland China.