The Young Reporter

Residents of buildings with only one covid-19 case, including the mutant strain, will self-monitor instead of going to government quarantine centres, Dr Ronald Lam, Controller of the Centre of Health Protection, said today in a press conference. More than 1,000 residents are being released from quarantine centres, including from Kornhill and Caribbean Coast where mutant strain cases were found, after they test negative. “To prevent further transmission, a very cautious approach needs to be taken,” Dr Lam said in the press conference. Close contacts still need to quarantine, Dr Lam said, but the fully vaccinated will have seven days of home confinement plus seven days of self-monitoring. Department of Health clarified at night that close contacts still need to go to government quarantine centres plus seven days of self-monitoring. Fully vaccinated includes those with a “full course” after 14 days. People who have recovered from Covid-19 within nine months are also included. Onee Chan, a resident at Kornhill who was sent to the government quarantine centre at Penny’s Bay yesterday, said she was speechless over the new measure. She said it was not sensible to put all residents into the quarantine centre. “The requirements to release are also nonsense. It’s absolutely annoying to ask us to do testing at their centre on our own. How can they guarantee everybody to strictly follow? Self monitoring is a joke. We’ve been self monitoring ourselves for more than a year,” Ms Chan said. Shorter hotel quarantines were also announced for airport arrivals from designated countries beginning May 12. Measures for extremely high-risk and very high-risk areas, including the United Kingdom, remain unchanged. Control measures for quarantine hotels will also be reviewed, said Dr Lam.

Jean Francois Harvey from Harvey Law Group, along with over 60 immigration companies, were at the International Immigration and Property Expo on March 27. However, what Mr Harvey witnessed there left him dumbfounded. “I saw consultants openly telling people to buy start-up visas. I also saw others squarely selling jobs — it may not be a real job, but it’ll get them the visa,” Mr Harvey recounted. Paying money for a job offer is illegal in Canada, but such blatant advertising at the expo shows how many people are not aware of Canadian immigration policies, making them susceptible to misinformation and fraud. Immigration fraud has long been an issue in Hong Kong, as Mr Harvey observed throughout his 29 years as an immigration lawyer. “But now, there’s a big increase in interest in immigration, so there’s more misinformation than ever,” said Mr Harvey. The number of Hong Kong passport holders applying for temporary or permanent residency in Canada reached 8,121 in 2020, hitting its highest point in at least five years despite border closures because of Covid-19, according to Reuters. And with misinformation comes fraud. Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino released a statement on March 5 to commemorate the government’s Fraud Prevention campaign, saying, “Immigration fraud targets people who want to come to Canada in good faith. Sadly, the pandemic has exacerbated these troubling activities, with new ways for dishonest individuals to defraud clients.” A 2019 investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exposed how an immigration consultancy targeted Chinese nationals and charged them up to $170,000 Canadian dollars (HK$1,052,754) for a fake job. CBC also found that Hong Kong had reported “high rates of fraud or suspected fraud, and only 15-22% of arranged employment offers were found to be genuine.” Nancy Caron, a spokesperson for Immigration, …