London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Oct 04, 2025

As Beijing, Hong Kong face second coronavirus onslaught, quarantine gets serious

Restrictions on arrivals from overseas are toughened in a bid to hold back a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. China is now reporting more imported new cases than domestic infections

Beijing and Hong Kong are toughening up their 14-day quarantine restrictions as a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic returns to China, brought by homecoming citizens and visitors from overseas and threatening to push up infection rates that had been coming under control.

“If we do not impose tougher measures at this stage, our previous efforts to prevent the disease from spreading throughout these two months could be completely wasted,” Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday.

For the past five days, China has reported more imported cases than local infections, with the mainland reporting zero domestic cases on Thursday for the first time since the outbreak began. There were 34 new infections, all from overseas.

Hong Kong saw 25 new cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day increase, with most of them coming from outside the special administrative region.

Beijing, Hong Kong and Macau have all responded with tighter and expanded rules on quarantine, or self-isolation, for arrivals.

A week ago Beijing announced all arrivals to the capital must self-isolate at home or in a designated hotel or hostel for 14 days. A few days later, the rules were tightened again, to remove the option of staying at home, and requiring quarantined arrivals to pay their accommodation costs.

In Hong Kong, from Thursday, all arrivals must undergo a 14-day self-isolation at home followed by two weeks of medical surveillance. Similar measures have been announced by Macau’s authorities.

Arrivals in Hong Kong are now required to wear an electronic wristband and download an app to monitor their movements. An alert will be sent to the Department of Health and the police if a wristband is broken or the user’s smartphone is disconnected or moves away from the quarantine dwelling, according to the government's chief information officer.

“The purpose of self-isolation is for individuals who may be infectious to reduce risk to others by minimising contact with others – for example, travellers from affected areas,” said Dr Clarence Tam, an assistant professor from National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

The standard 14 days of quarantine for Covid-19 is based on the average incubation period of the disease, which is five days, Tam explained.

“An individual who hasn't developed symptoms by the 14th day of quarantine has a very low probability of being infected or of posing an infection risk to others,” he said.

Fang Tianyu, a Beijing student whose Boston high school shut due to the epidemic, returned home last Saturday. He arrived before the latest rules came into effect and has been able to quarantine at home instead of in a designated accommodation.

Fang flew with Hainan Airlines and spent around four hours going through border control and health checks at the airport, before he was cleared at a quarantine processing point. He was picked up by his parents and is staying with them.

If he could do it again, Fang said, he would choose the now-mandatory option of staying at a hotel to protect his parents.

“I think it would have been much more responsible. I have friends who chose to go to a hotel when they could have gone home, because they live with their grandparents,” he said.

Fang spent his 19th birthday in quarantine, celebrating with a Corona beer and a bowl of dumplings. He joked that quarantine was a great excuse to not socialise with people.

Fang said there were guards at his residential complex and neighbours were also watchful. He is required to send his temperature to a community worker every day and the guards bring him deliveries and takeaway food while he is not permitted to leave his apartment.

Fang said he was aware of a WeChat group for residents and they had talked about him as the person who had returned from the US. “I'm pretty sure half my residential compound knows that I have come back from a foreign country,” he said.

Beijing's municipal government has introduced an app called Health Bao, or Health Treasure, which generates a user's status as “red: under centralised observation”, “orange: home observation” or “green: normal”. There are usually staff in public areas and apartment complexes checking people’s status before entry or exit.

If they find someone under observation who is not supposed to be outside, staff are directed to call the Centre for Disease Control or the person’s residential compound.

The app uses data collected by the CDC and various residential compounds in Beijing. While it is not mandatory, it makes the movement of residents within the city more convenient, according to the municipal government.



Despite his long wait at Beijing’s Capital Airport, Fang said he knew of others who had worse experiences. A friend of his was in mid-air when the rules changed, arriving to an eight-hour wait at the airport.

Fang said the greater awareness of the disease in China – compared to the US and Canadian airports he travelled through on his way home – was clear. No airport staff had been wearing protecting gear in either Boston or Toronto, he said.

“Several border control agents in the US got infected, which I think they should have seen coming, because they were at international airports and not wearing protection,” Fang said.

There have been reports of coronavirus infections among airport staff and TSA agents across the US, including in Atlanta, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.

While the mainland and Hong Kong ramp up quarantine and social distancing rules to try and contain the virus, it is now a pandemic and may be here to stay, Tam said.

“The prevailing view is that it's unlikely the transmission can be reduced to a level where the virus will not become entrenched in the human population, as was done with Sars.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×