HK tightens measures for transit passengers

Hong Kong on Thursday announced stricter requirements for transit passengers coming from Taiwan and overseas after a traveller who spent days stuck at the airport was found to be carrying the Omicron Covid variant.

The government said in a statement that from Wednesday, December 8 that those transit passengers will have to show proof of a negative PCR test result taken within 72 hours.

That’s the same requirement currently imposed on travellers with Hong Kong as their destination.

Officials said they have also proposed that the Airport Authority tighten arrangements for transit passengers to lower cross-infection risks, such as strengthening infection-control measures for areas that transit passengers have access to at the airport.

Meanwhile, health authorities have put 16 airport staff into quarantine at Penny’s Bay quarantine centre after considering them to be close contacts of the transit passenger carrying the Omicron variant.

The Centre for Health Protection said the areas where the man, 38, had visited at the airport were disinfected, and all 13 environmental samples taken tested negative.

And residents of more nations have been banned from Hong Kong over the emergence of the Omicron variant.

From Sunday, non-Hong Kong residents who have recently been to South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Finland, Norway and Ghana will be barred from entry after imported Omicron cases were reported in those countries.