A ban on flights to Hong Kong from Britain is on the cards after a more infectious strain of Covid-19 was found in the country, sources said on Monday, with the government considering imposing an extra week of quarantine for arrivals.
European countries Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium, plus Canada, have already stopped all flights from Britain.
"If the Europeans are doing so, it's a possibility Hong Kong will follow," a senior Cathay Pacific Airways source said.
According to a source, Hong Kong was expecting more than 80 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, and earlier at a Legislative Council meeting Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said the government was concerned about the worsening outbreak in London and would reveal its decision over flights from the country later.
With the emergence of a more infectious mutated coronavirus strain, VUI-202012/01, which was first detected in Britain in September and is 70% more transmittable, health experts have called on the government to either extend quarantine for arrivals or ban flights altogether.
Even during the pandemic, few airlines are operating to Hong Kong from Britain this week.
Cathay's flight from London will not operate on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, owing to a planned reduction in services during the festive period.
For other airlines operating between Britain and Hong Kong, British Airways flights were previously banned from flying passengers to Hong Kong up to Saturday this week for breaching health control regulations, and Virgin Atlantic's Hong Kong-bound flight on Monday was cancelled.
Chinese University respiratory medicine expert Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, who advises the government on the pandemic, told a radio show that local authorities were considering extending the mandatory quarantine period.
Hui suggested arrivals to the city from Britain should be subjected to 21 days in quarantine, rather than the standard 14 days.
"We need to be cautious as over 9,000 overseas students in the UK are expected to return to Hong Kong," Hui said. "After 14 days of hotel quarantine, they should stay at home for another week and test negative before they go out to the community."
Hui said the mutated coronavirus strain could spread faster, but the severity of the illness may not change.
Respiratory medicine specialist Leung Chi-chiu, told another radio show that the government should suspend flights from Britain altogether, or extend the mandatory quarantine period to three weeks.
Hong Kong is battling a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, and another 74 cases were confirmed on Sunday, bringing the confirmed number of infections to 8,152, with 130 related deaths.
Between Dec 14 and 20, the city logged an average of 87.3 coronavirus cases each day, compared with 92 cases per day in the previous seven-day period.
But Leung warned that more than 200 infections of unknown origin were still recorded last week, which meant the transmission chain ran deep across all sectors in the city.
Leung urged the public to be self-disciplined and not attend large social gatherings at home or at venues over the festive season to slow down the spread of the coronavirus in the community.
He said shopping centres were crowded over the weekend, and called it a "horrifying" high-risk infection situation.
