A pass that does not pass! Hong Kong’s move to grant Hollywood star Nicole Kidman a quarantine waiver so she can shoot for Amazon Prime Video series Expats about the lives of wealthy expatriates arouses the anger of the population.
The financial center is experiencing one of the most restrictive and long quarantines in the world for all travelers from abroad. So far, these measures have limited the number of Covid-19 cases to around 12,000 for 7.5 million inhabitants.
Forty twenty-one days in a hotel
But for the past eighteen months, many residents have been cut off from their families living abroad. People arriving from countries considered to be at high risk for Covid, including the United States, France and Great Britain, must complete a twenty-one-day quarantine in a hotel.
But the 54-year-old actress was allowed to circumvent those measures. The Office of Trade and Economic Development has confirmed that the Australian star and other members of the film crew have been granted an exemption for “specific professional work.”
Comments are proliferating on social media
Since landing on August 12 in Hong Kong on a private jet from Australia, the tabloids have followed each of his appearances. She notably went shopping two days after her arrival. The actress then filmed in the Sai Wan district of Hong Kong Island for the series. Expats, based on the book by Janice YK Lee (2016) and of which she is an executive producer.
Since his arrival, comments have proliferated on social media about the exemption and the wealthy foreign elite living in Hong Kong, at a time when any dissent is clamped down by Beijing.
On Facebook, the much-followed group “People in Quarantine in Hong Kong” is replete with comments about how foreigners residing in the city have not seen their families in nearly two years because of the measures.
Elizabeth Quat, a pro-Beijing MP, said she was “worried about this exemption granted by the government” and admitted having “received a number of complaints from residents of Hong Kong”.
Exemptions are granted to certain senior executives on an exceptional basis
The chairman of banking giant HSBC, Mark Tucker, has just spent three weeks in quarantine upon his arrival from Britain.
This quarantine waiver for Nicole Kidman came days after Hong Kong tightened its rules for arrivals from several countries, which upended many travel plans after the summer break and caused a shortage of hotel rooms.