By The SUN
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| Not much reason to hope the yellow code tag will be removed by end of the year, officials say (File) |
The Hong Kong government has all but ruled out any
further easing of inbound travel restrictions before the end of the year.
Speaking on a radio program on Saturday, Chief
Secretary Chan Kwok-ki said that doing away with the amber yellow code during
the first three days of arrival in Hong Kong is hard to justify for now because
of the discovery of new variants of the coronavirus.
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But raising the vaccination rate among the local population could also serve as
reason for relaxing pandemic curbs.
CS Chan said any move to further relax the so-called “0+3”
system must be done gradually as the government will no longer make any U-turn
in its pandemic regulations.
The statement was echoed by Health Secretary Lo
Chung-mau who said many factors need to be considered before any policy shift on
inbound travel restriction is taken.
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| MAY CHANCE KA PANG MANALO! |
Lo said that since the the “0+3” system was adopted
the number of daily arrivals has increased, but the proportion of imported
cases has also increased. In addition, most of the new variants were found in
the imported cases.
Thus, the government needs to further monitor the
entry of mutant viruses to avoid large-scale community outbreaks.
Meanwhile, the daily Covid tally dropped slightly to
5,383, of which 372 were imported.
Eight more Covid patients have died.
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Public hospitals are now looking after a total of 1,934
Covid patients, including 217 who are newly admitted.
Among them, 32 patients are in critical condition, 10
of which are in intensive care, while 39 are in serious condition.
The city’s Covid-19 tally stands at 1,908,732 cases and 10,373 related fatalities.
According to the Centre for Health Protection the following sub-variants have been recorded as of Saturday: 202 cases of sub-lineage XBB, six of XBD, eight of BA.2.75.2, six of BA.4.6, 11 of BF.7 and 22 of BQ.1.1 among imported cases in Hong Kong, while six cases of sub-lineage XBD, one of BA.2.75.2 and seven of BQ.1.1 have also been detected among local cases.
However, the dominant strain is still BA.4/5, which accounts for 91.7 of the cases in the past seven days.
