Photo:CFP

Hong Kong would ban flights from eight countries starting Saturday as part of its enhanced anti-epidemic measures to prevent a potential fifth-wave epidemic caused by Omicron.  Experts said the measures were "excessively strict" but very likely to succeed to snuff out a potential outbreak in as soon as two weeks as the regional government is actively promoting the reopening of the border between Hong Kong and the mainland.

Flights from eight countries, including Australia, Canada and France, will be banned from Saturday for two weeks to prevent infections caused by the Omicron variant, Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam said Wednesday.

The other five banned countries are India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the UK and the US.  

Hong Kong has seen a surge in infections in the past four weeks and many flight passengers were found infected upon arrival. Flights from the eight countries will be banned after consideration of passenger traffic and the number of imported cases from these countries, according to Lam.

As the city is preparing to reopen borders with the Chinese mainland, Lam noted that the issue would certainly be affected, but the preparation work would not amount to nothing. Lam said that as long as Hong Kong can curb the transmission of the virus in a short period without local infections or cases whose source is unknown, the reopening work would be restarted.

This round of outbreak started after a male attendant of Cathay Pacific Airways, 44, was confirmed infected on December 29, 2021. He had dinner with his father in the Moon Palace in Kowloon Tong. As of Wednesday, six people had been confirmed infected by him, including his father.  

According the new enhanced policy, dining-in will be banned between 6 pm and 5 am starting Friday for 14 days. Bars, pubs and other entertainment places like gyms and museums should also be closed during this period.   

The measures look "excessively strict" as the outbreak is still at a very early stage and needs a few more days to see if it will worsen. But with such strict measures, the Hong Kong regional government is very likely to succeed in putting the outbreak under control in a short period, Jin Dongyan, a professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, told the Global Times on Wednesday.  

Analysts also noted that the HKSAR government would not want the sudden epidemic to affect the reopening of the borders with the mainland, so they would like to carry out measures as strict as possible to tame the outbreak as soon as possible.    

The cruise ship Spectrum of the Seas docks in Hong Kong on January 5, 2022, after it was ordered to return to the city for COVID-19 testing after nine people were found to be close contacts with a recent Omicron variant outbreak. Photo: AFP

Gabriel Matthew Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong's Li Kai Shing Faculty of Medicine and health advisor for the regional government, told media that he predicted that there are potentially five to ten transmission chains that have not been discovered in local communities, which called for urgent measures to curb the virus.    

According to information released by Hong Kong authorities, cases who have received vaccines showed a low virus load during this outbreak while those who have not showed a very high virus load and fast transmission of virus.   

The resurgence of reported cases has encouraged more Hong Kong residents to get vaccinated. 

Experts called for accelerated vaccination in the city and hoped the vaccination rate could reach 85-90 percent before the Spring Festival that falls on February 1. They also call for the regional government to lower the age standard to accept Sinovoac's vaccine to five years old.

Hong Kong authorities approved the application of Sinovac's vaccine for children aged 3-17, but priority is given to those aged 12-17. 
China's widely used Sinopharm and Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines are able to protect recipients against severe illness, hospitalization and death from the Omicron variant, World Health Organization incident manager Abdi Mahamud said at a press conference on Tuesday.