The Government announced today that in view of the rapidly worsening global pandemic situation due to the Omicron variant, passenger flights from eight countries will not be permitted to land in Hong Kong from January 8.

It pointed out that the number of imported cases involving the Omicron variant has been continuously rising recently and there are signs of local community transmission and spreading.

As such, more stringent inbound control measures must be implemented to further reduce the number of people arriving in the city from high-risk places so as to intercept the importation of cases.

With reference to inbound passenger traffic and the number of imported cases, the Government has decided to impose the place-specific flight suspension mechanism for eight countries for 14 days starting from January 8.

The countries include Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the UK and the US. All passenger flights from these places will be prohibited from landing in Hong Kong.

Those who have stayed in such places for more than two hours will also be restricted from boarding a passenger flight for Hong Kong in order to stop relevant people from travelling to the city via transit.

The Government said the new measure is extremely stringent and will inevitably affect the return journey of a number of Hong Kong residents in these eight countries.

However, Hong Kong is now facing the threat of a rapid deterioration of the local epidemic situation and it must act quickly and decisively to lower the risk.

Meanwhile, the Government announced that Cape Verde, Niger and South Sudan will be listed as Group A specified places from January 8 due to the detection of Omicron cases. Non-Hong Kong residents who have stayed in these regions within 21 days will not be allowed to enter Hong Kong.