Hong Kong chief executive John Lee said on Tuesday that unvaccinated Chinese visitors are being granted 180-day “vaccine passes” and exempted from the city’s expansive vaccine mandate because China supposedly has very low rates of coronavirus transmission.
Lee spoke up because Chinese social media users began posting stories about automatically receiving vaccine passports at the Hong Kong border, even though they were not vaccinated. According to Lee, this policy has been in place for quite some time but was not made public until now.
“The main reason is that the risk of [Chinese coronavirus] infection in the mainland [China] is the lowest in the world. Its risk, when compared with Hong Kong, has been much lower,” Lee insisted, even though China currently has millions of people under coronavirus lockdown, and some of them are beginning to starve.
Hong Kong residents grew understandably upset at this special treatment for Chinese visitors since they have been subjected to an exceptionally strict vaccine mandate. Last Thursday, the mandate was extended to cover children as young as five years old, banning the tykes from all public venues until they get at least two jabs by the end of November.
Children 12 and up will need three shots to satisfy the requirements for entry to public places. Secondary schools are not allowed to hold in-person classes unless 90 percent of the student body is triple-vaccinated. Compliance is monitored with a “vaccine pass” smartphone app or paper certificates with QR codes.
The new vaccine rules generated a great deal of uncertainty in Hong Kong about whether schools would open or not, which in turn left business leaders grumbling that the city has become an unattractive destination.
“There is so much uncertainty over whether classes are going to be canceled, can the kids go to school? The school uncertainty is definitely helping to drive people away and it makes it hard to attract people to Hong Kong,” Australian business chamber chief Robert Quinlivan told Reuters on Sunday.
Reuters noted that about 30,000 students withdrew from school in Hong Kong last year, and over 5,000 teachers quit their jobs. The city’s population declined by 113,000 in the first half of 2022, with many residents fleeing for the U.K., Canada, and United States.
Under the current rules, visitors from anywhere other than China and Macau must present proof of at least two vaccine shots, endure three days of hotel quarantine at their own expense, and then accept four days of “medical surveillance” during which they are not allowed to enter restaurants or many other public venues.
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