(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 linked to an air crew member who tested positive for the highly 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, a 76-year-old man, is the father of one air crew member. He had lunch with his son and another woman in a restaurant in Kowloon Tong on Dec. 27, the government during a briefing Friday. The other is a 34-year-old man who was at the same eatery, seated 10 meters away, on the same afternoon with three family members.
Another case was detected in a ground crew member who worked in a restricted area of the airport, mainly checking the boarding passes of departing travelers, officials said.
The ability to trace the infections back to their origins suggests there isn’t yet 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.
Officials are 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
Five Cathay aircrew members have recently tested positive for the omicron variant after returning to Hong Kong from duty, and some of them breached protocols and failed to comply with medical surveillance regulations, the airline’s general manager of corporate affairs Andy Wong said in a statement on Friday. Describing their actions as “extremely disappointing,” Wong apologized and said the company will launch disciplinary procedures.
Crew members are supposed to limit their outings to only essential trips during their first three days back from overseas duties. Some, including those ultimately found to be infected, have instead gone to bars, restaurants and other venues, 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.
Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam met Cathay executives on Friday and expressed her dissatisfaction on the breach of rules, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said at a briefing. Lam told Cathay to take remedial actions, Chan said.
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.
(Update with Cathay statements in the ninth paragraph)
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