Hong Kong tightens rules on travellers from 16 territories

This comes after COVID-19 resurged in other countries.

The Hong Kong government has tightened the entry requirements imposed on travellers coming from 16 areas amidst reports of COVID-19 resurgence in some parts of the world.

The government raised 15 overseas places’ risk levels to high-risk from medium-risk and one to medium-risk from low-risk, previously.

"The global COVID-19 epidemic situation is under serious threat from the Delta variant, with acute surges in the number of confirmed cases within a short period of time in many countries,”

“Despite large-scale vaccination programmes, many places are also experiencing resurgence of the virus, which poses enormous challenges to our local anti-epidemic efforts.” 

The 15 territories now under Hong Kong’s high-risk list include: Bangladesh, Cambodia, France, Greece, Iran, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America.

They will be joining Brazil, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, and the UK, which have all been identified as high risk earlier.

This will take effect on 20 August.

Meanwhile, Australia’s risk level was raised to medium-risk, starting 19 August. It will join all places outside China that have not been identified in the high-risk and low-risk list.

At present, New Zealand is the lone country considered as low-risk by Hong Kong.

“The government will continue to closely monitor the epidemic situation of various places and adopt a risk-based approach taking into account a basket of factors,” the spokesman said.