Hong Kong Confines Thousands in City’s First Lockdown

Hong Kong Confines Thousands in City's First Lockdown

Residents of 150 apartment blocks in the city's low income Jordan area have been confined to their flats - Image Source: Wikimedia

HONG KONG authorities have ordered around 10,000 residents to remain in their apartments unless they can provide a negative Covid test in the city’s first major lockdown.

In the poor and densely populated Jordan area of the metropolis, Hong Kong authorities have imposed the city’s first Covid lockdown to stop a surge in cases.

Around 10,000 Hong Kongers have been ordered to remain in their homes across 150 highrise apartment blocks, with hundreds of police officers deployed to the area to enforce the measures. The lockdown is expected to last 48 hours, during which time all residents will be tested.

“Residents will have to stay at their premises to avoid cross-infection until they get their test results,” Hong Kong’s health minister, Sophia Chan, told reporters. Despite its proximity to Covid’s epicentre in China, Hong Kong impressively kept infection rates under 10,000 with 170 deaths by imposing effective social distancing measures from the pandemic’s onset.

However, over the last two months, authorities in the city-state have struggled to control the fourth wave of the virus – with 4300 new cases recorded in one of the world’s most densely populated areas.

Most Hong Kongers live in apartments of 500 square feet, though the homes of many of the city’s poorest residents are even smaller. In highly populated, low-income neighbourhoods the virus has spread rapidly – causing authorities to implement the city’s first major home confinement in an effort to prevent a larger outbreak.


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Oisin Sweeney

Oisin is an Irish writer based in Seville, the sunny capital of Andalucia. After starting his working life as a bookseller, he moved into journalism and cut his teeth as a reporter at one of Ireland's biggest news websites. Since joining Euro Weekly News in November, he has enjoyed covering the latest stories from Seville, Spain and further afield - with special interests in crime, cybersecurity, and European politics. Anyone who can pronounce his name first try gets a free cerveza...

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