A restaurant staff (R) is handing over a takeaway food package to a customer outside a restaurant, while a QR code for the "Leave Home Safe" contact-tracing app is also seen on the wall, HKSAR, China, January 27, 2022. /CFP

A series of stringent COVID-19 containment measures have been put in place in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) after the city reported a record daily high of 1,161 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, including 1,153 cases of local transmission.

A day before, it reported 625 new cases of COVID-19. The city has reported nearly 4,000 infections over the past two weeks, taking the total tally of infections over 17,000 as of Wednesday afternoon, according to data from the Center for Health Protection of the HKSAR's Department of Health. 

HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday that religious venues and hair salons will be closed from February 10, and the current social distancing measures will be extended until February 24.

The vaccine pass scheme will be effective starting February 24 – unvaccinated people will be banned from entering a list of venues specified in the Prevention and Control of Disease (Requirements and Directions) (Business and Premises) Regulation. This list will be expanded to include shopping malls, wet markets, supermarkets, department stores, religious venues and hair salons.

The government will also ban cross-family gatherings in private premises involving more than two households. Moreover, close and secondary contacts of COVID-19 patients are subjected to home quarantine starting from Tuesday.

Lam said that the "zero COVID-19" is presently the best strategy for the HKSAR. The dynamic "zero infection" approach is in public interest as it protects people's health and safety, stressing that the HKSAR should adhere to the anti-epidemic strategy to buy time for enhancing the vaccination rate and thus ease pressure on the city's hospitals, she added.

Since the start of a mass inoculation program in February last year, about 5.44 million people, or 80.8 percent of the eligible population in the HKSAR, have taken at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, while over 4.9 million, or 72.8 percent of the eligible population, have taken two doses. Meanwhile, more than 1.09 million people in the region have taken their third booster shot.

Editor: Jin Weiduo