Amid a medical workers strike and a campaign of vandalism and arson aimed at forcing the closure of Hong Kong’s border with the mainland, officials today announced they will be closing all but three of the ports of entry into the city in an effort to stem the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference today, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that an additional four border checkpoints — Lo Wu, Lok Ma Chau, Huang Gang Port, and the Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal — will be closed starting at midnight. Last week, Lam had announced a partial closure of the city’s borders, shutting six of the city’s 13 border checkpoints, a measure critics had decried as too little.
The new measures, however, stop short of the full border closure being sought by a hospital workers’ union that began a five-day strike today to lend weight to their demands.
The only border checkpoints that will remain open are the airport, the Shenzhen Bay Bridge connecting Tin Shui Wai to Shenzhen, and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
So far, Hong Kong has 15 confirmed Wuhan coronavirus cases.
Lam dismissed a suggestion from a reporter that the extra border control measures were in direct response to the calls by the striking Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, saying that the strike was “political,” and that “extreme action” to try to force the government’s hand would not succeed.
“These measures are consistent with the initiatives rolled out earlier. They are completely irrelevant to the strike,” she said.
When asked why she hasn’t fully closed the borders, Lam reiterated that the number of mainlanders arriving in the SAR has dropped since the first round of border control point closures, and that more than 100,000 people, the vast majority of them Hongkongers returning home, were still crossing the border on a daily basis.
She went on to once again urge Hongkongers not to travel to the mainland unless it was absolutely necessary.
Speaking to reporters this evening, the HAEA confirmed that over 2,500 hospital workers joined the first day of the planned five-day strike.
The newly formed union had given Lam and her administration a deadline of 6pm this evening to respond to their demands to close the border with the mainland.
Winnie Yu, chairman of the HAEA, said that Lam’s new measures were not good enough, adding that despite Lam’s comments to the contrary, the strike was clearly working.
“The government has proposed a lot of measures on closing the border under the pressure of the healthcare worker strike, and all the experts are advising the CE to close the border,” HAEA Vice Chairman Ivan Law added.
“The CE also said that we won’t get what we want if we use strike to threaten the government. I think there’s already other noises from other industries to go on strike to pressure the government; I don’t think it’s just a healthcare worker issue.”
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