The Hong Kong government ordered all returning residents who had spent time in the United States to first serve a seven-day sentence at the Penny’s Bay quarantine camp before being released to the relative comfort of hotel quarantine for a further 14 days.
Officials cited the Omicron variant for their decision to impose the strictest quarantine rules available on travellers entering the territory from the United States. The decision, however, comes just days after the Biden administration said it would snub the Beijing Winter Olympics next year and the US hosted a pro-democracy summit that openly criticised Beijing’s influence over Hong Kong.
In the last few days, Hong Kong has added a slew of new countries to its so-called Group A list that requires all arrivals to quarantine for 21-days days. A select few countries are in an even higher category that requires travellers to first quarantine in Penny’s Bay for the first seven days.
The United States is the only country outside of Africa to be added to the enhanced Group A list. Health officials say this is a necessary measure as there is evidence of community transmission of Omicron in the United States.
Other countries experiencing community transmission including the United Kingdom and Germany have not been added to the enhanced Group A list.
Penny’s Bay is a massive quarantine camp close to the Hong Kong Disney resort which is capable of holding more than 3,500 detainees. In recent months, the camp has housed domestic workers arriving from the Philippines, as well as possible close contacts who were identified in the community.
Controversially, the camp has also housed hundreds of pilots and cabin crew from Cathay Pacific, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
The conditions are so bad in the camp that Cathay Pacific is hoping to send its pilots to the United States for four months at a time to get around the quarantine rules. British Airways has suspended passenger flights to Hong Kong because the risk of crew being detained at the facility is too great.
Health officials say they decided to slap the United States with enhanced quarantine requirements after a 37-year-old traveller returned to Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific flight from Los Angeles tested positive for COVID-19 on their arrival in the city.
The traveller was fully vaccinated and asymptomatic but genomic sequencing confirmed the man was infected with the Omicron variant.
The case is the fifth Omicron infection detected in Hong Kong. Two others were in travellers from Nigeria and the remaining two were found in travellers from South Africa.
While at Penny’s Bay, detainees will have to undergo daily COVID-19 testing and other “health surveillance”.
It appears I have missed my window to ever travel to Hong Kong.