Hong Kong residents must have at least one coronavirus vaccine shot to enter restaurants beginning late next month, Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, said on Tuesday, as the city races to stamp out the spread of the Omicron variant.
The new requirements, which were to begin this month, will instead start on Feb. 24, after Lunar New Year celebrations have ended, to give businesses and residents time to prepare, Mrs. Lam said. She added that the rule could be expanded to include other public spaces, such as museums and libraries.
The city has maintained strict controls to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, requiring the use of a contact-tracing app in public places, forcing arrivals from overseas to undergo as much as three weeks of quarantine, locking down high-rise buildings and ordering mass testing of residents to stamp out the threat of local spread of Omicron.
But Hong Kong’s vaccine drive has been set back by residents who are suspicious of the government and its unpopular leader. The city has fully vaccinated only about 69 percent of its population, according to the government.
The city announced the toughened requirements as officials were searching for six diners at a restaurant linked to an Omicron cluster affecting more than 300 people.
The six were among those who had lunch at the Moon Palace restaurant in the upscale Fashion Walk mall in the Kowloon Tong district on Dec. 27, officials said. The others were sent to a government facility to quarantine.
Health officials say they believe that a flight attendant for Cathay Pacific Airways who had ignored isolation rules after returning from the United States infected his father and another person while dining at Moon Palace that day. The airline said it had fired the unnamed flight attendant and one other Cathay employee as a result of the outbreak.
Hong Kong recorded 13 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday. So far, six Omicron cases have been connected to the restaurant; the city has recorded 102 cases of the variant in total.
Mrs. Lam’s government has made resumption of normal travel with mainland China a priority, and she said on Tuesday that the Omicron cases would most likely delay plans to ease travel restrictions between Hong Kong and the mainland.
“I would not deny that that has an impact, which means that we would have to wait another while before we could put in place the very sought-after resumption of normal travel between Hong Kong and the mainland,” she said.
In other news from around the globe:
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At least 2,000 passengers were stuck on a cruise ship between the coastal states of Maharashtra and Goa in India after more than 60 people onboard had tested positive for the coronavirus. The infected passengers had refused to be quarantined in Goa, local news media reported. And as of Tuesday morning, the ship had been sent back to Mumbai, where it originated. The ship has been caught between two states where virus cases have spiked after crowded New Year’s celebrations and as a third wave, aided by the Omicron variant, appeared set to spread rapidly throughout the country. India’s Health Ministry reported 37,379 new infections on Tuesday, one of the highest daily totals since September.
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In South Korea, more than 1,000 people, including some doctors, have filed a lawsuit against the government calling for vaccine passes to be abolished, claiming discrimination and excessive infringement on their basic rights. The vaccine passes, introduced in December, allow those who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus or got a negative test result within 24 hours to enter many public venues. The passes have faced criticism in many quarters, including from pregnant women, of whom more than 90 percent are not vaccinated against the virus, according to government data. Scientists say a growing body of evidence shows the vaccines are safe and effective during pregnancy.
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China ordered the nearly 1.2 million residents of the city of Yuzhou in Henan Province to stay home after three asymptomatic cases of the virus were discovered in recent days. The lockdown of 13 million residents in Xi’an, in northwestern China, is entering its second week.
John Yoon and Karan Singh contributed reporting.
