HONG KONG — Hong Kongers have rarely seen their government react so swiftly to public opinion.
On Thursday, city officials lifted a ban on dining in restaurants — imposed just a day earlier, to fight the spread of the coronavirus — after a public outcry sparked by pictures of workers and older people eating outside in the punishing July heat, on pavements, curbs and the steps of footbridges.
Hong Kong is battling its worst community outbreak since the pandemic began, after initial success in containing the coronavirus. This month, the death toll nearly doubled in a week — as of Friday, it stood at 27 — and infections sharply spiked.
Some new clusters were linked to nursing homes and restaurants, while scores of other cases had no known origin. The government’s initial response included limits on restaurants’ opening hours, with dining in allowed until 6 p.m. but forbidden after that.
But with case numbers staying high, dine-in service was banned altogether on Wednesday — leaving many working-class residents, used to grabbing a quick bite during the lunch hour at one of Hong Kong’s countless inexpensive restaurants, with nowhere to go.
Photos of the results quickly went viral, including one of a 62-year-old cleaner eating in a park during a downpour, huddled under an umbrella. (“What can I do; I can only blame myself for being poor,” a local news outlet, Citizen News, quoted the man as saying.)
Chan Chun-heung, 50, who sells vegetables at a wet market in the Wan Chai District, said she had to eat her Wednesday lunch sitting on the ground.
“I had to cover my food whenever someone walked past me, otherwise the dust would get everywhere,” Ms. Chan said. “And it was so hot.”
Critics accused the government of failing to think about working people who can’t spend their lunch breaks in air-conditioned offices. Stung by the reaction, officials scrambled to open 19 community centers across the city as makeshift shelters where people could go for lunch.
Then, on Thursday, it reversed the policy altogether, announcing that dining in for breakfast and lunch could resume the next day. (Dinner is still limited to takeout or delivery.)
The mini-furor tapped into longstanding perceptions that Hong Kong’s policymakers, many of them well-heeled, are out of touch with how most people live. (Carrie Lam, the city’s unpopular leader, was once mocked for not knowing where to buy toilet paper.)
Daphne Ho, the organizing secretary of the Construction Site Workers General Union, said many construction workers had crowded together in a covered area for lunch on Wednesday. Others ate at dust-filled, poorly ventilated construction sites, and some opted to skip lunch altogether, she said.
“Many people thought, why couldn’t Hong Kongers even have the dignity to eat a meal?” Ms. Ho said. “Why did they have to squat in the streets?”
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
-
Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
-
What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
-
Is the coronavirus airborne?
- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
-
What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
- Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.
-
Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
Ms. Chan, the vegetable seller, was relieved on Thursday to be able to eat at one of the converted shelters near her market. A few other residents ate takeout at sparsely distributed tables, all facing the wall, while a pack of reporters waited outside to interview them.
Before the shelters were opened, a wide variety of venues — including churches, hotels, clinics, hair salons and art studios — had offered to let people eat in their facilities free. Critics of the government were quick to tie that spirit of grass-roots solidarity to the city’s pro-democracy protest movement, which has seen a variety of mutual aid networks spring up.
Health officials have tied Hong Kong’s current surge to incoming travelers who had been exempted from quarantine requirements, including airline crew, sailors and some business executives. (Quarantine rules have since been tightened.)
Ben Cowling, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong, said that unless crowds were present, eating lunch outdoors was a “low-risk activity, but not very comfortable.”
But the risks of dining in are also limited, he said, “given the measures that had already been put in place in restaurants, including screens between tables, temperature checks and hand sanitizers.”
"Eat" - Google News
July 31, 2020 at 04:55PM
https://ift.tt/2XuMDwz
Hong Kong Bans Eating in Restaurants. And Then It Doesn’t. - The New York Times
"Eat" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35xQHgx
https://ift.tt/2zlBS68
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Hong Kong Bans Eating in Restaurants. And Then It Doesn’t. - The New York Times"
Post a Comment