Hong Kong to ban flights from Canada and seven other countries

Hong Kong will be banning flights from Canada and seven other countries for two weeks.

On Wednesday, the Hong Kong government announced that from January 8 to 21, flights from Canada, Australia, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the UK, and the US would not be allowed to land in Hong Kong.

This ban comes amid the rapid surge in Omicron cases around the world.

“If you have paid attention, you will notice that most of our imported cases are from these places,” said Carrie Lam, chief executive of Hong Kong, in a press briefing on Wednesday. “We hope that this measure can drastically cut down the imported cases to Hong Kong.”

The Govt announces that in view of the rapidly worsening global #COVID19 pandemic situation due to the #Omicron variant, passenger flights from eight countries will not be permitted to land in Hong Kong from January 8 https://t.co/sMlTRA017W

— Hong Kong SAR Government News (@newsgovhk) January 5, 2022

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Travellers who have stayed in these eight countries for more than two hours will also be restricted from boarding passenger flights for Hong Kong.

The tightening of travel restrictions to Hong Kong began in December when the government implemented a travel ban on non-residents coming from Canada.

Canada has implemented its own measures to reduce the spread of Omicron in Canada, with mandatory pre-entry PCR tests for all travellers returning to Canada.

The Hong Kong government said it’ll review whether the flight suspensions can be lifted depending on “the latest global and local epidemic developments.”