Hong Kong lawmaker tests Covid positive after photo with Xi Jinping

HONG KONG: A Hong Kong lawmaker who posed for a gaggle photograph with Chinese language President Xi Jinping throughout the chief’s go to to the monetary hub this week confirmed Sunday he has since examined constructive for coronavirus.
Xi visited Hong Kong beneath strict safety measures to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the town’s handover from Britain in his first journey exterior mainland China for the reason that outbreak of the pandemic.
Steven Ho, a 42-year-old member of Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing get together who sits within the metropolis’s rubber stamp legislature, was one in all about 100 officers granted shut contact with Xi for a photograph name on Thursday afternoon.
Ho was standing two rows straight behind Xi, in response to the images launched by the federal government.
The lawmaker examined damaging on the primary day of Xi’s go to on Thursday and returned an unsure check on Friday, he mentioned.
He didn’t participate in any occasions on Friday after the unsure check outcome, he mentioned in an announcement on social media.
“The pattern of July 1 was one with extraordinarily low infectivity and it was categorised as ‘unsure’, however for the sake of public safety, I didn’t take part within the occasions on that day,” Ho wrote.
Ho was the second member of the DAB get together to have examined constructive round Xi’s go to.
Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole consultant to Beijing’s high lawmaking physique, examined constructive on Thursday and was absent from all occasions.
China is the one main financial system nonetheless pursuing a zero-Covid strategy of eliminating outbreaks as they emerge, utilizing snap lockdowns and mass testing.
Xi has not left China in almost 900 days and the huge nation’s borders have been largely sealed to most outsiders.
Hong Kong is pursuing a lighter model of zero-Covid however has stored heavy journey and gathering restrictions in place all through the pandemic.
Terribly tight guidelines had been imposed to make sure each the coronavirus and political opposition weren’t in Xi’s orbit throughout his journey to the town, the place a democracy motion has been crushed since big protests three years in the past.
Tons of of presidency officers, legislators and different invited company had been compelled into an anti-Covid “closed-loop” system, which included limiting their social contacts, taking day by day PCR exams and checking right into a quarantine lodge within the days main as much as the go to.
In the course of the go to, components of the town had been shut down, distinguished dissidents had been positioned beneath heavy police surveillance, and a number of journalists had been barred from protecting the official occasions.
9 arrests had been made by the town’s nationwide safety police within the week earlier than Xi’s go to and at the very least two arrests had been made on Friday.