Hong Kong announced plans to reopen government offices and some public facilities, as Chief Executive Carrie Lam took cautious steps to get the city back to work amid the threat of further coronavirus outbreaks and fresh political protests.
Government employees will start returning to offices May 4 and the city is preparing to open facilities including museums and libraries that have been closed during the pandemic, Lam said yesterday. Authorities have yet to decide whether to extend social distancing measures beyond May 7, she said, as the city continues to see success containing daily cases.
“When we relax these measures, if the need arises, we may need to tighten them again until there is a vaccine developed,” she said at a briefing before a meeting of her advisory Executive Council.
Also yesterday, Hong Kong’s secretary for food and health, Sophia Chan said the city would extend mandatory quarantine rules for arrivals from mainland China and Macau until June 7. However, she said they were amending the regulations to enable the government to eventually exempt some students and business people who need to regularly cross the border, without providing a time line.
The outbreak of Covid-19 and the government’s subsequent social-distancing restrictions have, over the past few months, largely suppressed pro-democracy protests that rocked the Asian financial hub last year. But as virus cases ease, activists have begun organizing new demonstrations, defying the measures.
A protest of some 100 people on Friday ended peacefully at a central shopping mall, while another two days later was dispersed by police after authorities warned demonstrators they would be in violation of rules barring groups of more than four people.
Last week, Hong Kong extended social distancing measures for an additional 14 days, with Lam saying it was “not the time to let down our guard.” Many protesters fear that her China-backed government may be keeping restrictions in place in a bid to suppress political unrest.
The city has contained the spread of the virus through a mix of early social distancing measures starting in late January, travel restrictions, contact tracing and mandatory quarantines.
It has seen zero daily new cases for five of the last nine days and hasn’t reported a virus-related death since mid-March. Almost all of the newer infections were found in people with a recent travel history. Bloomberg
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