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Hong Kong’s UK Flight Ban Leaves Students Stranded, Parents in Despair

For 22-year old Timmin Lam, who is studying in Manchester, the ban on flights from the uk to Hong Kong in the week is that the latest during a series of unrelenting measures that have prevented him from travelling home for nearly two years.

“I feel trapped within the UK. i actually wish the pandemic would improve,” he said.

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Authorities within the global financial hub said on Monday that Hong Kong would ban passenger flights from the uk starting Dominion Day to curb the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19. [L2N2OA0PS]

Britain has been categorised as extremely high-risk and other people who have stayed within the country for quite two hours are going to be unable to board passenger flights for Hong Kong .

It is the second time that the Chinese-ruled hub has barred arrivals from Britain; the sooner ban was effective from December 2020 until May.

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The government said the ban was thanks to “the recent rebound of the epidemic situation within the UK and therefore the widespread Delta variant virus strain there, including variety of cases with L452R mutant virus strains detected by tests from people coming back from the united kingdom .”

Before the ban, restrictions on the united kingdom had been relaxed to permit vaccinated travellers only 7 days of quarantine compared with 21 days. Thousands of scholars had planned to return home for the summer, and therefore the sudden change has resulted in chaos for several .

“I really wish that they had announced this earlier to permit longer for us to rearrange and organise things,” said Wallis Au, a 20-year-old physiotherapy student in Britain. Au said she had a flight booking to arrive in Hong Kong on July 5 but now wouldn’t be ready to return before the deadline.

Due to Hong Kong’s strict COVID-19 regulations, travellers cannot land within the city without securing a hotel reservation for quarantine. After the ban was announced, parents scrambled to seek out hotels for his or her children, except for many it had been impossible.

“Even if I can manage to urge an earlier flight – which was a push because everyone was rushing – how could she board without the hotel booking?” said Hong Kong mother Debi Yeung, whose 20-year old daughter is studying in Leeds.

Yeung said she had changed flight dates and hotel bookings several times already due to changing regulations, while her daughter had scheduled multiple COVID-tests before her journey.

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