Starting tomorrow, cross-border travellers will only be limited to one entry and one exit between Macao and Zhuhai per day.
The only exceptions will be goods vehicle drivers, students and one accompanying parent, civil servants and medical staff responding to emergencies, and funeral home staff with transport duties.
Lei Tak Fai, Head of the Public Security Police Force’s Public Relations, said that the new measure, which was rushed into being following the discovery of a frequent traveller positive case, starts at midnight tonight and will remain in force until 9 September.
Travellers who wish to make more than one entry and exit per day must apply to the authorities at Hengqin Port, Lei said. Immigration officials reported that 233,900 travellers either entered or exited Macao yesterday.
Addressing the daily Covid-19 briefing, Leong Iek Hou, Head of the Health Bureau’s Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Division, said that if all the NAT tests done today prove negative, residents will not be required to take RATs tomorrow. NAT tests performed yesterday did not find any positive cases.
“We are still trying to find the source of the last positive case,” she said.
Leong said that regarding the new quarantine measure put in place in Hong Kong (three days’ quarantine, followed by four at home) Macao must stay consistent with mainland China’s Covid-19 prevention requirements. “We are in permanent contact with Hong Kong regarding the pandemic situation,” she said. However, in the meantime anyone travelling to Macao from Hong Kong will still need to follow the 7+3 quarantine ruling.
Leong added that government departments are trying to reduce the time that arrivals at the airport need to wait for the results of tests. She stressed that the idea to conduct the tests in hotels where they could be taken after arrival is not acceptable because it could lead to a spread of the virus in the hotels if cases are found in recently arrived passengers.
She added: “Recent flights from Singapore to Macao have had more than 100 passengers who need to be checked and all the luggage must be also seen as 11 of them tested positive. All this takes time.
“We understand that the present situation is not ideal. We will try to reduce the time as quickly as we can.”
