Hong Kong announced on Tuesday the end of the compulsory wearing of masks both outdoors and indoors against the coronavirus, the ultimate health restriction that the metropolis is one of the last in the world to have maintained for so long.
“I am announcing that the mask requirement will be completely removed from tomorrow March 1, including indoors, outdoors and on public transit,” said Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee.
Wearing a mask was imposed three years ago in Hong Kong, and has been maintained for nearly 1,000 days.
“I’m ready to get rid of it,” said Tiffany, a financial sector employee in her twenties. “It costs money to buy masks,” she told AFP.
“With the removal of required mask wearing, we are beginning (a) total return to normalcy. And this will be very beneficial to economic development, ”added Mr. Lee, during a press briefing on Tuesday.
He added that hospitals and nursing homes could put their own restrictions in place.
Public health experts were increasingly questioning the need to enforce mask-wearing in a city where several waves of Covid infections have arguably brought a high level of immunity.
Companies and other tourism professionals also felt that the mask undermined the overall image of the city.
This ultimate health restriction also goes against the executive’s eagerness to demonstrate that Hong Kong has resumed its usual activities, John Lee having promised to welcome visitors “without isolation, without quarantine and without restrictions” during the launch of the “Hello, Hong Kong” campaign in early February.
“Anachronistic»
“Frankly, it’s anachronistic today to be illegal if you don’t wear it,” Siddharth Sridhar, a virologist professor at the University of Hong Kong, tweeted on Sunday.
The mask was required in almost all public places, for anyone over the age of 2, under penalty of a fine of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars (1,200 euros).
By the end of 2022, Hong Kong had issued 22,000 fines for mask-related offenses and raised the equivalent of 13.4 million euros in payment.
The city was one of the last on the planet to require masks, even outdoors. The lifting of this measure comes after an identical decision on Monday in the neighboring Chinese territory of Macau, which maintains the wearing of masks only in risk areas such as hospitals.
Last year, most European countries had ended this obligation everywhere, except in planes and some subways.
Singapore, Hong Kong’s Asian rival, abolished the wearing of masks inside buildings in August, while South Korea did the same in January this year. In Taiwan, people can breathe unfiltered air again in most places since Feb. 20.
“Like a part of the body”
Until late last year, Hong Kong had one of the world’s strictest approaches to the pandemic. She stuck to Beijing’s “zero COVID” strategy, until mainland China suddenly abandoned its restrictive policy in December.
Confinements and systematic screening tests were then abandoned in Hong Kong where the economy was already shaken by the massive democratic demonstrations of 2019, followed by a crackdown on the opposition.
Still, not all Hong Kong residents are ready to take off their masks just yet.
“Despite the lifting of the mask requirement, I will continue to wear them for the short term,” said Chan, a retiree.
He prefers to wait and make sure there is no resurgence of infections after the reopening of borders with mainland China.
“The mask is like a part of my body,” he says, “if I stop wearing it, it takes time to get used to it.”