China coronavirus: Hong Kong leader adopts advice from medical experts – but draws line at closing border with mainland China

South China Morning Post ^ | Published: 10:43pm, 25 Jan, 2020 Updated: 11:19pm, 25 Jan, 2020 | Alvin Lum

[Zhang Fei]

Hong Kong’s embattled leader adopted the advice of local medical experts as she on Saturday launched a new wave of measures to counter the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus – though divisions remained on whether the city should tighten or even close its border with mainland China. Some 48 hours after the city confirmed its first two cases – with a further three announced on Friday – Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor raised the government’s response against the new virus to the highest level of emergency after a public outcry.

Lam agreed to suggestions by microbiologist Professor Yuen Kwok-yung and Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, who both sit on an advisory panel reporting directly to her, to extend the Lunar New Year holiday for schools and to cancel the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon.

Critics had argued that four infected mainlanders had come from Wuhan by high-speed rail, sparking a debate over whether the city should tighten up security for visitors, especially those coming from the Hubei city at the epicentre of the outbreak.

Lam ruled out the proposal, requested by a new labour union representing medical staff at public hospitals, saying it was “inappropriate and impractical”. She added that making it mandatory to fill in a health declaration at all the city’s borders and ports – another demand from the medical experts, initially shrugged off by the government – would suffice.

Professor Gabriel Leung, the dean of University of Hong Kong’s medical school, and Hui also poured cold water on the contentious proposal, saying the move was too extreme and not practical.

“For the past 20 years, whether it’s avian flu, Sars or swine flu, we … have never closed the border,” Leung said. Citing Keiji Fukuda, who once led the epidemiology section of United States Centres for Disease

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