The Diplomat has removed paywall restrictions on our coverage of the COVID–19 crisis. Filipino workers gather on a street in Hong Kong in 2015, the pre-pandemic age. Credit: Depositphotos Advertisement Tens of thousands of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong are scrambling to undergo COVID-19 screenings this weekend before the government’s Sunday deadline for mandatory testing – a policy slammed by migrant rights groups as discriminatory. The government received swift backlash after announcing compulsory testing and vaccination policies last week for the city’s 370,000 domestic workers, but not for other non-resident migrants such as the city’s white-collar financial workers. Since the pandemic began, domestic helpers in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the region have been blamed for outbreaks and are now facing growing discrimination, according to activists.