HONG KONG - Officials are now reviewing whether to make Covid-19 vaccination compulsory for foreign domestic helpers after the move, announced last Friday (April 30), was widely criticised.
The controversial policy was announced after tests showed that a 39-year-old helper from the Philippines had the more infectious South African variant of the coronavirus, N501Y.
She became the second helper to be infected with the variant but the first in which the source of infection was unknown. The earlier patient was also asymptomatic.
The latest case led officials to send about 400 households from a Tung Chung residential block called the Caribbean Coast into quarantine for three weeks.
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HK’s Joshua Wong pleads guilty over vigil last year
Reuters, HONG KONG
Hong Kong democracy advocate Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) and four others yesterday pleaded guilty of participating in an illegal assembly on June 4 last year to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
It was the first time the vigil had been banned in the territory, with police citing, as it did for all demonstrations last year, COVID-19 restrictions on group gatherings. It is expected to face a similar fate this year.
Still, tens of thousands of people lit candles across Hong Kong in what was largely a peaceful event, bar a brief skirmish with riot police in one neighborhood.