A plan to remove a 14-day quarantine requirement for people entering Zhuhai from Macau was scrapped at the last hour overnight in yet another blow to Macau’s tourism and entertainment operators on the eve of Golden Week.
The decision comes after Macau Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng had stated earlier that he hoped the quarantine measure would be scrapped at midnight of the start of 1 October. Instead, the 14-day quarantine requirement remains in place with no end date yet confirmed.
The policy update was released just an hour before the requirement was set to be removed after a long three-way video conference between the Macao SAR Government, Guangdong Provincial Government and the Zhuhai Municipal Government on Thursday. In the end, Guangdong chose to maintain the current quarantine measures due to COVID-19 pandemic considerations.
This is the second time in 48 hours that the quarantine measures have been extended following a small outbreak of COVID-19 in Macau last week. Macau has reported a total of eight COVID-19 cases since 24 September, with six of those being local cases related to a designated quarantine hotel. Although Macau did not record any more local cases in the past two days and all samples from a mass testing blitz came back negative, the development reflects ongoing levels of concern in neighboring areas.
The 14-day quarantine requirement was put in place for three days initially and had been due to end at the start of 29 September before being extended for 48 hours. It is not yet known when the measure will be dropped.
