HONG KONG -- Hong Kong's move to ease border curbs only for vaccinated executives of large companies is irking the city's wider populace just as the local inoculation rate shows signs of picking up.
The local government earlier this week announced that senior executives from about 500 companies across the banking, insurance, trading and payment sectors, as well as directors of large listed companies, can seek exemptions from strict quarantine measures -- provided they have had their shots.
A spokesperson for the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau on Monday called the measure "necessary" to help companies operate smoothly during the pandemic, to maintain financial stability and to shore up Hong Kong's status as an international financial center.
But while some businesses have welcomed the move -- especially in the financial sector, which accounts for a fifth of the city's economy -- to many the policy smacks of special treatment.
"Is there any scientific evidence proving that top executives have better immune systems than the rest of us?" an advertising executive in her 30s wrote on Facebook.
"Next up: all families who own Rolls Royces are now exempt from quarantine. Effective immediately," another person commented on a local news page.
Hong Kong's 21-day quarantine for travelers from everywhere except mainland China is among the strictest in the world, with hotel bills ranging from HK$10,000 to over HK$1 million ($1,290 to $129,000). The government has largely resisted pressure to ease the rules for inoculated people, saying the vaccination rate is still low.
Only 15.8% of the population has been fully vaccinated, as of Tuesday, well below the level in rival financial centers such as Singapore and New York. But recently unveiled incentives -- including paid leave for civil servants, lotteries for free flights and even apartments, and signals of further restrictions on the unvaccinated -- have boosted the numbers in the past week.
Daily vaccinations have crossed 30,000, double what they were previously. The government has said it will further relax social restrictions for immunized people by June 10.
Quarantine exemptions first became available last year only for business leaders coming from the mainland. Singapore does not have such exemptions in place for business travelers.
"It would be wonderful if [quarantine exemptions] could be extended to all vaccinated persons, not only the very rich ones," said Ben Cowling, professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong.
Yet the special treatment might not be legally challengeable, as Hong Kong's Prevention and Control of Disease Ordinance grants the local government sweeping powers to set out emergency regulations related to public health, according to local lawyers.
For businesses, the change does offer some relief. The exemptions can "encourage resumption of necessary business travels and bring business activities gradually back to normal, which is particularly important to Hong Kong as an international financial center," Standard Chartered said in a statement.
"We will look into how this measure would facilitate our senior executives based in other markets to visit Hong Kong for meetings with clients and colleagues," the bank said.
Financial companies licensed by Hong Kong's regulators can each apply for two senior employees to visit and two to return to the city per month, without them having to quarantine if they are vaccinated. Directors of large companies in the main indexes of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange can also apply for the quarantine exemption if their travel plans are "essential to the operation" of the business, the government said.
The government will review applications based on criteria including where the executive is traveling from. Executives must undergo testing and comply with preapproved itineraries.
The relaxation of rules -- for some -- comes just two months after expats and the rich hit back against the city's quarantine policies, after a COVID-19 outbreak in an upper-class neighborhood prompted the government to isolate hundreds at designated facilities, including children.
In Hong Kong, everyone who tests positive is taken to a hospital, and anyone deemed to have close contact with a positive case is required to stay in a government center for two weeks. Everyone in the vicinity of a positive case is also obliged to be tested.
Complaints aside, the rules have prevented the need for any citywide lockdown despite four waves of infections. The city of 7.5 million people has recorded just over 11,800 cases and 210 deaths since January last year.
Additional reporting by Cora Zhu.