(Bloomberg) — Two Hong Kong residents have been preliminarily diagnosed with Covid-19, marking the first community spread of the virus in nearly seven months to people without a recent travel history or ties to the industry.
Both infections were likely linked to an air crew member who tested positive for the highly mutated and infectious omicron variant after he moved about the city following an overseas flight. The first potential community cluster of omicron, which infects 70 times faster than previous strains, underscores the risk for Hong Kong’s Covid Zero strategy, which has kept local cases at bay since early June.
One patient is a 76-year-old family member who had lunch with the crew member and another woman in a restaurant in Kowloon Tong on Dec. 27, the government said in a statement late Thursday. The other is a 34-year-old man who was at the same eatery on the same afternoon with three relatives.
The ability to trace both infections back to their origins suggests there isn’t a widespread local outbreak in the city, which has maintained a zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic. The government suspects both may carry omicron, however, and the potential risk led officials to mandate testing for everyone who lives in the same buildings as them.
It is also encouraging all adults to get booster shots starting on Jan. 1, following studies from around the world that show two doses of any vaccine are inadequate to fight the more infectious omicron variant.
The rising number of omicron cases globally is already threatening Hong Kong as returning residents and new arrivals increasingly enter with undetected infections. Such imported cases account for most of the numbers throughout 2021. The increasingly isolated Asian financial hub has been imposing more stringent border controls and quarantine rules in an effort to keep the virus out of the community, but concerns are mounting that it will be left behind as other major cities shift toward living with Covid as endemic.
Aircrew Infections
There have been a number of omicron infections found in aircrew members over the past few days. Some of them were suspected of breaking the airline’s guidance on isolation by going on non-essential outings during their first three days back from overseas duties, exposing the city to infection risks.
On Thursday, the government also reported a preliminary imported case involving a 47-year-old air crew member who returned from U.S. and is also suspected of carrying omicron. As a result, the apartment building in the expat-friendly Kennedy Town neighborhood where he lives was locked down while testing was conducted.
While most of the Covid-19 threat to Hong Kong has come from overseas travel, the aircrew responsible for those flights had been exempted from the quarantine rules because of the difficulty it would make for staffing. Now that has changed.
Closing Loopholes
The government decided to end the exemption on passenger flights to anywhere other than mainland China and to increase the mandatory hotel quarantine to seven days for cargo aircrew, dealing a blow to airlines and supply chains already under strain. The news was first reported by the South China Morning Post.
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, Hong Kong’s flagship carrier, suspended all long-haul freight and cargo-only flights for seven days due to stricter rules, according to a statement on its website Thursday. Earlier it said it would make “significant” changes to its passenger flight schedule due to the rule changes.
Hong Kong is also shutting down routes for two weeks if multiple people with Covid infections are found on any one flight, or if more cases are found over the course of a week. It has banned Cathay Pacific flights from Toronto and Los Angeles from Dec. 29 to Jan. 11, adding to a list of suspended routes from a range of carriers flying from London and Seoul, to Dubai and Bangkok.
The city of 7.4 million people has reported 12,631 cases and 213 deaths throughout the entire Covid pandemic.
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