These days, you are more likely to be locked up than locked down, in Hong Kong.
This once
freewheeling, transient, cosmopolitan and welcoming city has adopted the themes of
captivity and isolation with remarkable enthusiasm. If you are looking to visit
from the UK or just about any other western nation, you might as well forget it - unless you are an official resident with a valid ID card, double-vaccinated, desperate
and/or deranged.
At 21 days, Hong Kong holds the world record for the world’s longest and
strictest COVID-19 quarantine incarceration requirement. It's known locally as Q
Prison. Even gaining entry to this enforced hotel imprisonment is a protracted
test of patience.
The last time I saw
Hong Kong airport in May 2020, it was mostly deserted but it still resembled an
airport. This time, it resembled a mass human transit station. Long lanes; multiple
signs; make-shift Perspex cubicles; solemn officials; forms to be completed and checked; QR codes to be scanned; PCR tests to be performed; certificates to
be issued and advisory booklets to be read.
One masked man behind
one of the many cubicles cheerfully informed us that if our 21-day compulsory hotel
quarantine was breached for any reason, we were liable to a HK$25,000 fine
and six months imprisonment.
Having been officially
processed and duly warned, inmates stumbled, exhausted, to the holding
area. Wearing green identity labels, secured around our necks on a
red lanyard, we all located our coded and designated white table and chair. A matching white neatly-folded plastic trash
bag was assiduously placed in the left-hand corner of every identical white desk.
This must be what it’s like to be a bewildered specimen in a large-scale
laboratory experiment.
Knowing this could be my
last opportunity to walk more than five paces in the same direction for three
weeks, I frantically paced and jogged up and down the polished marble floors of
the airport concourse, like a demented marathon runner, warming up for the big
race. No one would be departing from these departure gates for anywhere exotic,
any time soon. These are all human holding zones now, full of weary and compliant passengers,
all awaiting to start their sentence in Q-Prison.
Hong Kong has a zero-tolerance
policy towards COVID-19. In the last two years it has seen about 12,300 cases
and recorded 213 COVID-related deaths. The city is about the same size as London
which has suffered more than 19,000 deaths from COVID-19, over the same period.
Hong Kong has done well but now it has a
serious problem simply because most of the rest of the world has not done such
a great job. So, the city’s leadership desperate to re-open its border with Mainland
China, is terrified of importing cases that might damage its COVID-free status,
offend Beijing and wipe out its older residents, many of whom are reluctant to
get vaccinated.
Hence, this once vibrant
entrepot has just about cut itself of from any physical contact with the rest of
the world. It is effectively isolating
and throttling itself, simultaneously. Even
returning residents must comply with the extremely stringent 21-day quarantine
regime which incorporates no less than nine PCR COVID- tests before even parole
will be considered. Good behaviour is not taken into account.
Much of the local news
concerns the latest unfortunate citizen to be jailed for falling foul of the recently
imposed National Security Law. Even
showing a movie the authorities don’t approve of, can land you in the clink. Detention
seems to be the way forward in Hong Kong. Not surprisingly, airline traffic between
here and London is almost one way.
After one of the many gender-neutral Hazmat suits had handed out yet another form, passengers were
permitted to proceed through immigration control, collect their bags and join
yet another queue – this one for the bus to town. Four hours had passed in a
slowly unfolding bureaucratic torture and there was nothing in the way of good
humour or irreverent banter to alleviate the pain.
The HKSAR government
carefully selected the most dilapidated mini-bus for the final leg of our epic
journey, some 26 hours after arriving at Heathrow Terminal 5. After our bags were sprayed with some noxious substance, we were allowed to board and sitting in separate
seats, grinded and bumped our way through the dark, lesser-known back
streets of Causeway Bay district.
Our tour guide for the
evening, was a humourless and officious woman with large black spectacles,
wearing the obligatory blue Hazmat suit, rubber gloves with matching shower cap
and visor, who squawked instructions into her mobile phone and snapped impatiently
at the driver. Zombie passengers were deposited furtively, in the concealed
rear entrance lobbies of their designated hotels.
Check-in formalities for our room on the 23rd floor of the Best Western Plus Hotel in Sai
Ying Pun, were undertaken at a tatty office desk, surrounded by an uneven
makeshift wall of Perspex. Hotel staff were dressed ready for any unexpected chemical
and biological attack. A bank of glowing CCTV screens displayed multiple hotel room
corridors and doors. Staff are monitoring them to check no one steps outside their
room during their 21 days of captivity. The police are called if there is a breach.
It’s all very serious
and as we were ushered towards the lift to commence our custodial sentence in Q
Prison, no one laughed when I asked them what time the hotel bar opened.
1 comment:
What a captivating read, it reads like some kind of science-fiction description of travel. How incredible that you are actually going through this impersonal experience and being confined to a room for 21 days. I don't know how you have coped. When you have finished your "time" I would love to read the next article about what it felt like living in a hotel room for 21 days!
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