HK faces further Covid curbs

Warnings from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region point to tighter curbs being once gain brought in to control the spread of Covid following a spike in infections, something that would further drive a wedge between it and competing financial centres such as Singapore that have instead moved to relax restrictions.

Hong Kong reported on Wednesday that its daily infection rate went above 7,800, and authorities have already responded by limiting participation in scheduled local sports events.

The South China Morning Post reported that the Sun Hung Kai Properties Hong Kong 10k Championship was cancelled on Wednesday, four days before it was due to take place, because the government had told organisers that they needed to cut down participants to 500 against the 2,500 who had registered for the race.

Elsewhere, the Cross Harbour Race is threatened, the newspaper adds, after signals from the government of the need to limit the scope of events where participants are not wearing masks.

The Straits Times in Singapore - Hong Kong's chief regional rival as a financial centre - reported HK health official Chuang Shuk-kwan noting at a briefing that: "The current situation is on a rising trend."

"Of course we hope to conduct a targeted virus control approach, but we are very worried about the health-care system capacity. If the pressure on health-care capacity continues, the government - although unwillingly - can't rule out the chance to tighten some social distancing rules, and that will impact more residents."

The Standard, another Hong Kong publication, highlighted the pushback from some local politicians to the threat of tightening rather than relaxing the rules in the SAR, particularly given how other countries in the Asia region are moving to make it easier for travellers to gain entry.

It cited lawmaker Doreen Kong Yuk-foon saying: "If one in three Hongkongers has contracted Covid already, is this not a good enough reason for the government to relax the curbs? Maybe authorities can at least allow overseas citizens to return without fulfilling the vaccination requirement?"

Kong argued that Hong Kong's infection ratio is close to that of Singapore, where health minister Ong Ye Kung told a briefing on Wednesday that an estimated 70% of the 5.5 million population has already contracted the disease, and where the indoor mask requirement has been dropped, The Standard wrote.

Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, Japan announced that it would drop the pre-arrival testing requirement for vaccinated travellers entering the country from early September. It will also ease the current cap of 20,000 entries daily and allow foreign tourists to enter without needing to be part of a guided tour.