The Macau government has added three more cities in China to its system of mandatory 14-day quarantines designed to prevent Covid-19 from spreading to the casino enclave.
Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, and the Liaoning city of Dalian joined a shifting number of virus hotspots on the mainland targeted for quarantine, a list that at varying times has included Beijing, the Sichuan capital of Chengdu, a number of cities in Heilongjiang province and the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang Uygur.
A statement from the government’s Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre statement said the additions constitute “the latest development of the Covid-19 epidemic situation” in Hebei and Liaoning.
The provinces, which border Inner Mongolia in the northeast of the country, comprise around 117 million people.
Currently, across most of the mainland, the principal feeder market for Macau’s gaming and tourism industries, arrivals who have not been outside the country in the previous 14 days are required only to present an up-to-date certificate confirming they’ve tested negative for the virus. The same applies to visitors from Taiwan.
Hong Kongers, however, the source of around 10 percent of annual visitation, remain barred from the territory as Macau’s much larger sister city combats a recent surge in infections. Macau authorities say they’ll look to lift the ban as soon as the contamination is brought under control, which is defined as two consecutive weeks of no new infections.
Currently, around 1,700 people are being held in Macau in designated quarantine hotels, according to news reports.
Authorities in the territory also have confirmed that a ban dating back to last March on foreign nationals entering the territory will remain in force even for arrivals who have been vaccinated against the potentially deadly virus, which has claimed more than 1.8 million lives worldwide.
Alvis Lo Iek Long, a clinical director of the Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre, justified continuing the ban, saying, “According to the latest scientific evidence, we cannot ensure that those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 will not spread the novel coronavirus, even though they do not develop any symptoms that is, they are asymptomatic carriers of the virus.”
Macau has not recorded a new Covid case in six months. The last known local case was identified in April.
The government, meanwhile, said it has purchased 1.2 million doses of vaccines in three separate batches from China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), Germany’s BioNTech and an Anglo-Swedish joint venture of AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
Deliveries are expected in the first and second quarters.
