Hong Kong Weighs Quarantine Exemptions for Banking Summit, HKET Says

Felix Tam and Jinshan Hong
2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong is considering a series of travel and quarantine exemptions for participants in a November investment summit designed to trumpet the financial hub’s revival, according to a local media report.

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The government is studying exemptions that would allow participants to skip mandatory hotel quarantine as part of its plan to ensure the summit can go ahead even if the city can’t further ease Covid curbs for travelers by then, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported in a column, citing people it didn’t identify.

Read more: Wall Street CEOs Want Zero Quarantine for Hong Kong’s Big Summit

Several of Wall Street’s biggest banks have made quarantine-free travel a precondition for senior executives to attend the conference, people familiar with the discussions said this month.

Hong Kong’s government didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and email from Bloomberg News seeking comment on the HKET report.

Once a hub for the free flow of goods and talent, and a core part of the global banking landscape, Hong Kong’s economy is on track for its third contraction since 2019 after isolating itself from the world throughout the pandemic.

Chief Executive John Lee -- sworn into office on July 1 -- has pledged to restore the city’s global standing. But he faces the difficult task of trying to balance reopening with the world with reviving travel with mainland China, where strict Covid Zero rules persist. Hong Kong itself is reporting daily case tallies that are the highest in more than four months.

Hong Kong has already made tentative steps to ease some of the world’s toughest travel restrictions, including reducing the period of time visitors spend in hotel quarantine to three days from seven. While down from as long as 21 days required in the past, it falls short of what business groups say the city needs to do to recover its status.

Hong Kong’s top officials remain uncertain whether the financial hub can scrap hotel quarantine for all visitors by November, the report added.

That’s a potential blow to visitors looking to come to the city for a rugby tournament that month. The event has received government approval to go ahead but will implement a raft of rules like a closed-loop system for players and a limit on the number of people who can attend.

Hong Kong is now reporting more than 6,000 cases daily, the highest since March. An increasing number of hospitalizations have also put pressure on the health-care system, prompting hospitals to scale back non-emergency services and authorities to reopen community facilities like the Asia World Expo.

(Updates to add request for comment in fourth paragraph.)

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