‘HK preparing to re-open public facilities’

Bloomberg

Hong Kong announced plans to reopen government offices and some public facilities, as Chief Executive Carrie Lam took cautious steps to get the city back to work amid the threat of further coronavirus outbreaks and fresh political protests.
Government employees will start returning to offices from May 4 and the city is preparing to open facilities including museums and libraries that have been closed during the pandemic, Lam said. Authorities have yet to decide whether to extend social distancing measures beyond May 7, she said, as the city continues to see success containing daily cases. “When we relax these measures, if the need arises, we may need to tighten them again until there is a vaccine developed,” she said at a briefing before a meeting of her advisory Executive Council.
The move to reopen came the same day New Zealand emerged from nearly five weeks of strict nationwide lockdown, offering a return to work for as many as half a million people. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lowered the alert level to 3.
That allowed workers to return to factories and construction sites, permitted takeaway food outlets to reopen, and fuelled hopes that economic activity will pick up despite many restrictions remaining in place.
Later on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s secretary for food and health, Sophia Chan said the city would extend mandatory quarantine rules for arrivals from mainland China and Macau until June 7. However, she said they were amending the regulations to enable the government to eventually exempt some students and business people who need to regularly cross the border, without providing a time line.
The outbreak of Covid-19 and the government’s subsequent social-distancing restrictions have, over the past few months, largely suppressed pro-democracy protests that rocked the Asian financial hub last year. But as virus cases ease, activists have begun organising new demonstrations, defying the measures.
Last week, Hong Kong extended social distancing measures for an additional 14 days, with Lam saying it was “not the time to let down our guard.”