Hong Kong: Thousands of Hong Kongers will be ordered to stay in their homes for the city’s first coronavirus lockdown, local media reported Friday, as authorities battle an outbreak in one of its poorest and most densely packed districts.
The order bans anyone from leaving their apartment unless they can show a negative test where cases have surged in recent days, and will last until everyone within the designated area has been tested, the reports said.
The South China Morning Post said the measures would come in at midnight Friday into Saturday with some 1,700 police ready to enforce the lockdown covering some 150 housing blocks and up to 9,000 people.
Health officials declined to comment on the proposal at an afternoon press briefing but multiple local outlets reported the lockdown citing government officials throughout Friday.
Hong Kong was one of the first places to be struck by the coronavirus since it burst out of central China.
It has kept infections under 10,000 with some 170 deaths by imposing effective but economically punishing social distancing measures for much of the last year.
Over the last two months it has been hit by a fourth wave of infections with authorities struggling to bring the daily numbers down.
Stubborn clusters have emerged in neighbourhoods within Yau Tsim Mong, a low-income district notorious for some of the world’s most cramped housing.
On paper Hong Kong is one of the richest cities in the world.
But it suffers from pervasive inequality, an acute housing shortage and eye-watering rents that successive governments have failed to solve.