Four hotels — three in Cotai, Taipa and one in Macau — with a total of 1,450 rooms, will close from Friday onward for commercial reasons, which was announced on Thursday by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) representative during the daily press conference.
In Cotai, the Four Seasons, St. Regis and Conrad will close and in Macau, the Grand Harbor will close.
According to information from the hotel sector, several other hotels are expected to close in the coming days, some of them in the Inner Harbour.
During the press conference, it was also revealed that several Macau residents have been quarantined on board cruise ships in both Hong Kong and Japan where several cases of the novel coronavirus were detected.
The World Dream cruise, currently quarantined in Hong Kong with 3,600 passengers and crew on board, has 15 Macau passport holders and seven others with Portuguese passports believed to reside in Macau.
The Diamond Princess cruise in Japan, off Yokohama, has 3700 people quarantined on board. Among them are 5 Macau residents — 2 Macau passport holders and 3 Portuguese passport holders.
At the press conference, it was also announced that Macau’s first novel coronavirus patient was discharged from hospital Thursday afternoon.
The patient has made a full recovery and was discharged after half a month of intensive treatment and intensive care by the medical team of the Conde S. Januário Hospital. The 52-year-old woman departed from Macau to Interior China under police escort.
Macau has so far recorded 10 confirmed novel coronavirus cases, including the patient discharged today, comprising seven tourists from Wuhan and three Macau residents.
The police said on Thursday that the number of visitors crossings the border in the last few days have been around 40,000 per day. Since 27th January, the number of visitors to Macau dropped 73.4 per cent compared with the same period last year.
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