Hong Kong bans “high-risk” flights in UK to remove virus Coronavirus pandemic News

Ban comes amid tensions between the UK and China over semi-autonomous Hong Kong, a former British colony.

Hong Kong will ban all passenger flights in the UK from Thursday as it seeks to prevent the spread of new variants of the coronavirus.

In a statement from the Hong Kong government on Monday, the UK was described as “very high risk” because of the “recent rebound of the epidemic in the UK and the strain of the Delta variant virus there is widespread”.

According to the classification, people who have been in the UK for more than two hours will be banned from boarding Hong Kong passenger flights.

The city confirmed the first local COVID case related to the Delta variant last week, ending a 16-day local zero case.

This is the second time that the Hong Kong government has banned flights to the UK, following a restriction imposed last December.

The ban comes amid high tensions between the UK and China over the semi-autonomous Hong Kong, which was a British colony until it was handed over to China in 1997.

The UK has criticized China for imposing a national security law on Hong Kong and tightening control over the media, saying Beijing is undermining the city’s autonomy.

The flight ban was enforced by the government’s policy to prevent the spread of coronavirus variants in Hong Kong.

The suspension of passenger flights is established if five or more passengers arriving from one place test positive for a particular variant of coronavirus or a mutation in the corresponding virus within seven days.

A ban is also imposed if 10 or more passengers in a place confirm that they are infected with coronavirus through any test, including tests performed during quarantine, within seven days.

The UK reported on Sunday that 14,876 people tested positive for coronavirus as recent infections escalated. It has confirmed more than four million cases since the pandemic began.

Hong Kong, for a month, set a 21-day quarantine for arrivals in most countries and announced three new cases of coronavirus, which set strict social exclusion regulations, on Monday. A total of 11,921 cases have been confirmed since the pandemic began.

The ban on flights from the UK comes as Hong Kong wants to relax quarantine measures in most other countries, including the US and Canada.

But several other countries, including the Philippines, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, also have flight bans to Hong Kong.