Wealthier Hong Kong residents experienced the local government’s “ambush lockdowns” for the first time at the weekend as an outbreak at an upmarket fitness centre threatened to kick off a new wave of the virus in the city.
The technique — in which police surround and seal off a number of apartment blocks in the city without warning overnight and submit all those caught inside to Covid-19 testing — has been adopted by local authorities as city residents are reticent about getting tested.
If residents test positive or are classified as a close contact of someone who does they are subject to at least two weeks of mandatory government quarantine.
The lockdowns occurred on Saturday night on Robinson Road, and then on Sunday night at Old Peak Road, both in the city’s Mid-Levels district, popular with investment bankers and expatriates.
There was another ambush lockdown in a nearby district on Sunday night.The outbreak appears to have started at Ursus Fitness, a pricey gym and has spread all through the city’s financial industry.
The government has issued mandatory testing notices to a number of workplaces, including those of Bloomberg, BNP Paribas, HSBC, EY and Credit Suisse.
Authorities are warning the outbreak could cause a fifth wave of infections in the city and force the re-introduction of social distancing regulations.
Previously many of these short lockdowns occurred in socio-economically disadvantaged parts of Kowloon, prompting accusations the government was unfairly targeting the poor, who could not afford to lose two weeks of work to quarantine.
While the city’s strict arrangements have been credited for controlling the spread of the virus, Hong Kong parents have been concerned about policies that also force children to be isolated if they are a close contact of a positive case.
Infants in a local playgroup were preparing to enter two weeks of quarantine on the weekend after a parent who had attended a meeting tested positive. “All the parents are extremely concerned,” a father of one of the children told the Financial Times.
Authorities decided against forcing an entire fourth-grade class from the Kellett School, the British international school, into quarantine after a teacher tested positive.