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Hong Kong has banned Singapore Airlines from operating flights from its home base to the city for 14 days, starting Saturday, for violating Covid-19 rules.
The ban was invoked after a passenger who arrived in Hong Kong via Singapore Airlines flight SQ882 on Wednesday was confirmed as infected, while three passengers failed to meet the requirements specified in the Disease Prevention and Control (Transport Regulations and Cross-Border Travelers). Regulation, according to a press release issued by the Health Department on Friday afternoon.
The department did not specify what requirements they had violated.
Passenger flights from the city-state to Hong Kong operated by Singapore Airlines will be banned from Saturday until April 16.
Hong Kong requires incoming passengers to provide information about their health and travel history, including whether they have visited any government designated high-risk countries. They must also provide proof of a reservation at a designated hotel for the entire duration of their quarantine.
Passengers from high-risk countries, such as Great Britain, Indonesia and the Philippines, must also provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test before boarding.
Under the rules, any failure by a traveler on a given flight to provide the correct information, combined with the presence of at least one coronavirus-positive passenger on board, will lead to a two-week ban on the airline.
[[nid:523979]]An airline may also have a particular route banned for 14 days if at least five passengers on a single flight are identified as infected on arrival, or if two consecutive flights from one location each have three or more passengers who contracted the coronavirus. However, the positive cases detected during the hotel quarantine do not count towards the total, only those discovered on arrival.
The most recent two-week ban was on Cathay Pacific flights from Manila to Hong Kong between March 15 and 28, and was activated after five passengers on flight CX906 tested positive on arrival.
The mandatory quarantine period for arrivals from three low-risk countries, namely Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, will be reduced from 21 to 14 days with seven days of self-monitoring and a mandatory test on the 19th from April 9. .
With the fourth wave of Covid-19 showing signs of abating in Hong Kong and a vaccination campaign underway, Secretary of Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah revealed earlier this week that the government had sent a new proposal to Singapore to restore a planned a travel bubble while writing to six other countries about resuming talks on such plans.
The previous travel bubble deal was canceled at the eleventh hour, just one day before its launch last November.
This article was first published in South China morning post.
