HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday said he will soon make a decision on further relaxing coronavirus restrictions, as residents and businesses decry quarantine rules that have kept the finance hub cut off for more than two years.
“We will make a decision soon and announce to the public,” chief executive John Lee told reporters.
“We want to be connected with the different places in the world. We would like to have an orderly opening up,” he added.
Hong Kong has adhered to a version of China’s strict zero COVID-19 rules throughout the pandemic, battering the economy and deepening the city’s brain drain as rival business hubs reopen.
It maintains mandatory hotel quarantine for international arrivals — currently at three days — widespread masking, business operating limits and bans on more than four people gathering in public.
Lee, a Beijing-anointed former security chief, took office in July and vowed to reopen the city while keeping cases low.
He reduced hotel quarantine from seven to three days but has faced a growing chorus of criticism from residents, business organizations and health experts saying he should go further.
Over the past week multiple Hong Kong media outlets have reported, citing sources, that the government has already agreed to lift quarantine.
Lee would not confirm that decision or commit to a firm timeline on Tuesday.
But his comments were the strongest indication yet that Hong Kong is planning to join much of the rest of the world in accepting endemicity.
That would leave just China and Taiwan still maintaining mandatory quarantine for arrivals.
“Our goal is to maximize Hong Kong’s international connectivity and reduce the inconvenience for arrivals due to quarantine, on the condition that we can control the trend of the pandemic,” Lee said.
Hong Kong is in the midst of a technical recession while its financial chief recently warned its fiscal deficit is expected to balloon to $12.7 billion (HK$100 billion) this year, twice initial estimates.
Arrivals at the airport, once one of the world’s busiest, are at a fraction of pre-pandemic levels with many airlines skipping the city altogether.
Regional rival Singapore has long dispensed with coronavirus controls and is hosting a slew of conferences, entertainment and sporting events over the coming months.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong has seen multiple events canceled by organizers citing the uncertain pandemic controls including most recently next year’s World Dragon Boat Championships which will be held in Thailand instead.
Hong Kong is planning to host a banking summit and the Rugby Sevens in November, although under current rules players in the latter will have to stay in a “closed loop” bubble.
Hong Kong to further relax COVID-19 restrictions ‘soon’
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Hong Kong to further relax COVID-19 restrictions ‘soon’
- Hong Kong has adhered to a version of China’s strict zero COVID-19 rules throughout the pandemic
- Policy battered the economy and deepened the city’s brain drain
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
