Hong Kong announced on 21 March that it will lift its ban on flights from nine countries as government officials assure that the latest Covid-19 wave has peaked.
The UK, US, Australia, Canada, France, India, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines will all have flights resumed in April, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said after they were stopped at the start of the year.
"The flight ban is no longer timely and appropriate...it will bring huge disturbances to Hong Kong people who are stuck in these nine countries if we continue the ban", she said in a daily news conference.
Lam further explained last week (16 March) that the latest wave of Omicron appeared to have peaked on 3 March and has since shown a slow, but downward trend.
It comes amid fears that financial institutions are "losing patience" with Hong Kong and its pandemic-era "isolated status", Lam said on Thursday (17 March).
The financial hub, which has adopted the mainland's ‘Zero-Covid' stance, has already cut draconian quarantine from 14 days to seven for vaccinated residents.
Lam has also paused plans to undergo city-wide testing, which would see all 7.4m citizens take a PCR test.
Meanwhile, Shenzhen on the mainland, as well as Shanghai, remain in lockdown, with millions of residents required to undergo PCR testing.
