Hong Kong Is Shutting the Last of Its Covid Quarantine Camps. Now What?
In a city where the unaffordability of housing is among the most urgent issues, some are pressing the government to utilize the pandemic relics to alleviate the problem.
The Kai Tak Community Isolation Facility in Hong Kong.
Photographer: Chan Long Hei/BloombergIn the almost three years that Hong Kong shut itself off to the world during Covid, hundreds of thousands of people were sent to isolate in vast quarantine camps built from scratch. As the city reopens, there is no plan yet on what to do with these metal containers that were emblematic of some of the city’s most extreme pandemic rules.
The biggest camp — the 18,000-bed Penny’s Bay facility next to Hong Kong Disneyland — was the last to be shuttered on March 1. At the closing ceremony, a banner that read “Penny’s Bay Quarantine Facility Mission Accomplished” in Chinese was hung on the camp’s closed gates, along with a large cut-out of a padlock. A band played Auld Lang Syne.