Hong Kong, Jan 15 (IANS): The current anti-Covid pandemic measures in Hong kOng will be extended for 14 more days until February 3, the city's Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced.
The existing measures effective from January 7 include an evening dine-in ban at restaurants and the closure of venues such as cinemas, gyms and beauty parlours, reports Xinhua news agency.
Passenger flights from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and the US will continue to be suspended until February 4, she said.
Lam also announced that applications for the fifth round of anti-pandemic fund will be open by next week.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong reported nine new cases of Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, taking the total tally of confirmed cases to 13,025, data from the Center for Health Protection (CHP) showed.
Meanwhile, the whole genome sequencing analysis of 69 cases announced earlier showed they all carried the Omicron variant of Covid-19, bringing the total number of infections to 396.
Since the launch of a mass inoculation program in February 2021, about 5.11 million people, or 75.8 per cent of the eligible population, have taken at least one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, while about 4.72 million, or 70 per cent of the people are fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, 626,535 people in Hong Kong have taken a booster shot as of Friday.