Suspension on incoming passengers flights from Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, UK and US
Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government on Wednesday (Jan. 5) announced a two-week ban on incoming flights from eight countries and tightened coronavirus restrictions after detecting cases of the Omicron variant.
All incoming flights from Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States, including interchanges, would be banned from January 8 to January 21. The Government will also specify Cape Verde, Niger and South Sudan as Group A specified places (High-Risk) to tighten the boarding and quarantine requirements for relevant inbound travellers.
From 0.00 am on January 8 (Hong Kong time) to January 21 (for 14 days) all passenger flights from these eight places will be prohibited from landing in Hong Kong, and at the same time, persons who have stayed in these places for more than two hours will be restricted from boarding passenger flights for Hong Kong.
A Government spokesman said, “We understand that the place-specific flight suspension mechanism is an extremely stringent measure. As an international city, Hong Kong has all along seen large numbers of Hong Kong residents returning from these eight places, and so the relevant measure will inevitably affect the return journey of relevant Hong Kong residents. However, Hong Kong is at the moment facing the threat of a rapid deterioration of the local epidemic situation. We must act quickly and decisively to lower the risk to the local epidemic situation.”
Meanwhile, in view of the latest global developments of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, Cape Verde, Niger and South Sudan will be specified as Group A specified places (High Risk) from 0.00 am on January 8 to tighten the boarding and quarantine requirements for relevant inbound travellers.
