The Government announced today that all passenger flights from the United Kingdom will be prohibited from landing in Hong Kong from July 1.

It will also list the UK as an extremely high-risk Group A1 specified place to restrict people who have stayed there for more than two hours from boarding passenger flights for Hong Kong.

In view of the recent rebound of the UK’s epidemic situation and the widespread Delta variant virus strain there, coupled with the detection of imported cases with the L452R mutant strain from people arriving from the UK in Hong Kong, the Government announced on June 24 the upgrading of the UK’s specification to a Group A2 specified place from today.

Nevertheless, the Government pointed out that a number of cases imported from the UK involving variant virus strains have persistently been found in the past few days.

As the number of the relevant imported cases has reached the threshold mentioned above, the Government will invoke the place-specific flight suspension mechanism for the UK and specify the UK as a Group 1 specified place.

The Government will gazette the relevant updated specifications under the Prevention & Control of Disease (Regulation of Cross-boundary Conveyances & Travellers) Regulation to effect the above measures on July 1.

The existing restrictions on Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa will continue, the Government added.