Indonesia reclassified as ‘very high risk’ but no flight ban imposed

By Daisy CL Mandap

Passengers from Indonesia will spend 21 days in hotel quarantine even if vaccinated

Hong Kong has downgraded Indonesia from the "high risk" to the “very high risk” category starting on Jun 21, but stopped short of imposing a ban on passenger flights coming from the country.

The classification, announced today, Jun 15, means all travelers from Indonesia will have to quarantine in a hotel for 21 days when they arrive in Hong Kong, vaccinated or not.

They will also be tested four times during quarantine, and observe a seven-day self-monitoring period afterwards, followed by another compulsory testing on the 26^th day of arrival.

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Only Ireland is currently in this Group A2 specified place category.

The announcement came as two newly arrived Indonesian foreign domestic helpers, aged 28 and 39,  were reported to have tested positive on their third-day sample while in hotel quarantine. The younger one was found to carry the L542R mutant strain of the coronavirus.

Indonesia's re-classification was made during Hong Kong’s regular review of cross-boundary restrictions, which has been held every two weeks starting on May 3.

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There being no mention of any other changes in the regulations mean the passenger flight ban on the Group A2 specified countries including the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa and Brazil, remains in place.

Previously, new arrivals from Indonesia could quarantine for 14 days if they were vaccinated

Previously, Indonesia was in Group B “high-risk” category, along with places like the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.

This means that vaccinated travelers from these countries could spend only 14 days in a hotel quarantine, and spend another week self-monitoring, with compulsory tests on the 16^th and 19^th day of arrival.

A government statement said Indonesia’s downgrade was due to the “persistent unstable epidemic situation in the region, as well as the prevalent transmission of cases involving the more transmissible and potentially more serious mutant virus strains…detected from important cases.”

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In the past 10 days, at least seven new arrivals from Indonesia, all foreign domestic helpers who arrived on two separate dates were found to carry a mutant strain of the coronavirus.

As a result, Garuda Indonesia and Cathay Pacific were separately suspended from flying passengers from Jakarta for two weeks, as they flew in the infected tavelers.

Had the incidents happened within a seven-day period, all passengers who had spent at least two hours in the past 21 days in Indonesia would have been stopped from boarding a flight to Hong Kong.

The city’s stringent boarding and quarantine requirements announced on May 4 require only five passengers from a country to test positive for any kind of variant on arrival test within a week, regardless of how many flights they had taken.

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"The government will continue to closely monitor the epidemic situation of various places, the prevalence of new virus variants, vaccination progress, and changes in the volume of cross-boundary passenger traffic, and will adjust the boarding and compulsory quarantine requirements for persons arriving at Hong Kong from relevant places as the situation warrants," the statement said.

Details on the grouping of specified places and their respective boarding and compulsory quarantine requirements can be found at www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/high-risk-places.html. 

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