Hundreds of new Covid-19 cases are still being reported across Hong Kong each day. - AFP
HONG KONG (Bloomberg): Hong Kong will proceed with relaxing virus curbs despite recording hundreds of cases a day, as the city’s Covid policy drifts farther from Beijing’s zero-tolerance approach.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam on Tuesday (May 17) said the city would roll back social distancing measures on May 19 as previously announced, including opening bars and extending the hours for restaurants to serve customers.
"It is reasonable to have 200 to 300 cases each day,” Lam said at a regular weekly briefing.
"We don’t need to worry too much. It is also our assessment that we can safely enter the second phase of easing social distancing measures.”
Lam continued to cite reopening the border with mainland China as one of her government’s top priorities, without saying how that would happen.
Shanghai, China’s most-populous city and one of the country’s major economic engines, is slowly exiting a lockdown that confined 25 million people to their homes for six weeks as President Xi Jinping sticks with a Covid Zero policy.
The trigger for easing in Shanghai was reporting zero infections outside the city’s extensive quarantine programme. That’s a far cry from the situation in Hong Kong, where hundreds of new cases are still reported across the city each day.
