Expat exodus as Covid-hit Hong Kong shuts schools

Hong Kong is to close all schools and turn them into Covid testing centres, with the announcement sparking an exodus by expats.

An almost empty MTR train in Hong Kong as the city battles an Omicron outbreak. Picture: AFP.

Within hours of Hong Kong’s top official saying schools would be closed and turned into response centres to tackle a surge in Covid-19, a rush occurred among foreign residents to find a way out of the city.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s decision to shift the summer holidays forward several months to start in March – repurposing schools as testing, vaccination and isolation centres – caught educators and parents off guard.

Some foreign workers immediately tried to book their families on flights out of the city as soon as possible. They took to WhatsApp messaging groups and other social-media platforms to discuss how to get out, with hundreds of posts inquiring about flight options and chartering planes amid sharply reduced commercial schedules in and out of the city.

Heads of international schools sent hastily composed emails to parents and staffers saying that they would meet with the city’s education department Wednesday to try to mitigate the situation. One urged parents not to act hastily.

Students had already been learning from home since January, and the announcement sent many summer plans into disarray.

“Livid. That straw has broken the camel’s back!” read one post. “You have no idea what it means to keep kids at home for six weeks with nothing to do, without even school being a distraction,” read another.

The closures are among the containment measures unveiled late on Tuesday as local officials come under pressure from Chinese leaders to fight the outbreak. Hong Kong has seen Covid-19 cases jump in recent weeks, with recorded infections rising above 6000 a day and officials conceding they don’t have the capacity to keep track of the number of actual cases.

Business groups in the city have long complained about the government’s handling of the pandemic, saying travel and other restrictions had made it hard to recruit and retain employees. Persistent border controls have meant that many expatriate workers based in the city haven’t seen family members in two years and remain stuck even as countries around the world learn to live with Covid-19.

While many parts of the world are reconnecting with other countries and relaxing social restrictions, Hong Kong has been ordered by Beijing to double down on efforts to curb the Omicron wave in line with a national zero-tolerance strategy to eliminate Covid-19 outbreaks. Once one of the most accessible cities in the world, Hong Kong has become increasingly isolated.

Officials will test the city’s entire population three times starting next month, raising fears among residents that they might be forced to spend weeks in isolation or treatment centres as the city rapidly expands isolation capacity.

“We’ve been inundated with calls for flights out of Hong Kong,” said Poonam Nanda, director of travel company GC Nanda & Sons. Ms Nanda said 80 per cent of the requests were from expatriate workers with entire families. The inquiries began during the past week, after the city announced mass testing, and surged late on Tuesday after Ms. Lam’s announcement, she said.

The company previously operated its own round-trip charter flights, but has now been applying for one-way charter operations for transit out of the city. Ms Nanda said people were making requests for destinations including the US, UK, continental Europe, Singapore and India.

The change in the education schedule, in which the school year would now end in mid-August, was made to allow for more face-to-face school time once the current outbreak is under control, said a person familiar with the decision.

The government also extended tough social-distancing measures until mid-April. The steps, among the strictest since the start of the pandemic, include the closures of bars, gyms and hair salons. A flight ban from a number of countries, including the US and Canada, will remain in place until April 20.

The Wall Street Journal