The Department of Health today announced that it will extend health quarantine arrangements on inbound travellers arriving from all countries/territories and demand them to undergo compulsory quarantine.

The new arrangements followed the Government’s announcement of the Red Outbound Travel Alert issued on all overseas countries/territories.

From midnight on March 19, the department’s port health officers will issue compulsory quarantine orders to people arriving in Hong Kong who have been to any one of all overseas countries/territories in the past 14 days, regardless of whether they are Hong Kong residents.

Meanwhile, quarantine measures announced earlier for people arriving in Hong Kong who have been to Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do in Korea, Iran, and the Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Veneto regions of Italy, as well as Hong Kong residents returning from Hubei Province in the past 14 days remain unchanged.

The quarantine measures for people entering Hong Kong from the Mainland, regardless of whether they are Hong Kong residents, also remain unchanged.

The department said the risk in all overseas countries/territories is high currently. As the surveillance method is different, it is not possible to assess the risk based on the number of confirmed cases reported.

The Centre for Health Protection will update the list of places with active community transmissions of COVID-19 under the reporting criteria for suspected cases to include all overseas countries/territories.

The department again strongly urges members of the public to avoid all non-essential travel outside Hong Kong, in view of the disease’s proliferation and continuous increase in the number of cases reported around the world.