Hong Kong’s Covid measures
Border Control
Preventing external COVID cases was the cornerstone of Zero-COVID. Hotel quarantine, at its height, lasted for 21 days, later reduced to 3 nights. 7 Hong Kong International Airport used a closed loop system to manage arrivals, meaning that passengers were not allowed contact with the outside world, dealing with immigration and COVID measures in an isolated system away from the rest of the city. Flight bans were in effect sporadically, with the most recent ones lasting from early January to early April of 2021. Passenger flights from 9 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, were not allowed to land in Hong Kong.
Public perception of COVID measures
Assessing the public’s reactions towards Zero -COVID forms the core of this essay. Since these policies directly affected 7.5 million Hong Kong citizens, it is crucial to accurately determine people’s perceptions towards such policies, their thoughts and opinions regarding the efficacy and usefulness of Zero-COVID. A quest ionnaire was conducted to collect people’s views, and assess their awareness regarding Zero-COVID in Hong Kong. In total, 127 responses were received, all of them from Hong Kong citizens. 10 awareness- type questions assessed the respondents’ knowledge of COVID policies in Hong Kong. In general, they believed they had a good understanding of the restrictions. This trend was echoed in the following questions, where participants’ knowledge was put to the test. It was demonstrated that they were more familiar with policies with a larger impact on their daily lives, such as the ban on dining in at restaurants, or the social distancing order.
Figure 2: Bar chart with respondents' self- rating of knowledge of Zero-COVID. Mean: 6.97 Median: 7 Mode: 7 Std. Dev.: 1.56
7 HKSARG – d, 2022.
95
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs