:format(jpg):focal(1275x858:1285x848):watermark(cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/5IDEBLR7ERC5TMAPLOHS63MVNM.png,0,30,0)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/NXP6ZGTIKZBL7ESY6LVXFO7XDI.jpg "‘Leave, as soon as possible’: Expats flee chaos-ridden Hong Kong Omicron")
“We are leaving and we will come back to empty our house when it is possible. We want to get our children out of here above all. Afterwards, we will see”, testifies to AFP Mathilde, for eight years in the financial center. “All of our close friends are leaving,” she says.
It was the risk of being separated from her three children if they caught the coronavirus that precipitated her departure. Cases of young children torn from their parents after testing positive to be placed in solitary confinement, as required by the rule in Hong Kong for anyone infected, have indeed been reported in recent weeks.
Since the start of the pandemic, the city of 7.4 million inhabitants, like mainland China, has applied a strict “zero-covid” policy thanks to which it has recorded only 12,000 cases in two years. . But since the appearance of Omicron in January, the number of infections has exploded, with now tens of thousands of daily cases.
For the past few weeks, hospitals have been saturated and the images of Covid patients piled up on stretchers in the open air in front of the emergency services have shocked Hong Kongers. Morgues are full and thousands of asymptomatic patients are separated from their relatives and herded into isolation camps.
Pandemic-related restrictions have been hard to bear for Hong Kong’s foreign workers, who make up around 8% of the population.
More than 71,000 people, including 63,000 residents, left the city in February, a record since the start of the pandemic, including more than 40,000 in the past two weeks.
“If there was a roadmap and we knew there was light at the end of the tunnel, we could stay,” says Heiko, an artificial intelligence entrepreneur. “As this is not the case, we have decided to leave”.
Her youngest recently celebrated her second birthday. “Her whole life has been a series of confinements, stays in quarantine hotels, playgrounds and closed kindergartens. She only saw her grandparents once,” sighs the German. .
Before Omicron arrived, summarizes Lucy Porter Jordan, a sociologist at the University of Hong Kong, “you had the restrictions but also the security. If you take that out of the equation, you end up with this sort of perfect storm which is likely to leave a lasting mark.”
Most of those leaving, she adds, are people with children and “people who can afford it”.
“Battle for Containers”
Companies warn of talent drain. The European Union estimates that 10% of its nationals in Hong Kong have left since the start of the pandemic.
“It has become very difficult to attract money, to invest in the long term in this place,” admits Keith, an investor who embarked on Wednesday for Canada, and who is asking for his first name to be changed.
He says he is above all “worried about the mental health” of his two daughters, aged 12 and 13. “Their teenage years, they will not find them”.
Several airlines have seen increases in bookings out of Hong Kong recently. “On average, we are seeing double-digit growth in one week on our bookings through July,” an Emirates spokesperson said.
International luggage shipping company SendMyBag told AFP that shipments from Hong Kong “are currently up four times compared to the same period in 2021”, while delivery times have doubled compared to December between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
Heiko says he paid around US$6,000 last year to ship his furniture from Singapore by ship, and was offered a minimum of US$14,000 to ship it back today. “Same focus, same distance, just the opposite direction,” he comments.
“Everyone is looking for tickets to leave, people are fighting over containers,” says Lin, a mother of two grown children.
“We have to give almost all our furniture for free. A friend who is leaving next week had a three-year-old BMW, she said to me: + I’m just going to give it to an association, nobody will buy it anyway +”, loose Lin, on her way to Dubai after twelve years in Hong Kong.
The current exodus adds to a wave of migration already underway, sparked among local residents by the crackdown on dissent that has been ongoing since pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Between June 2020 and June 2021, Hong Kong experienced its biggest population decline in 60 years, and there are few signs of that changing.
“We are only at the beginning of this wave,” said Chung Kim Wah, head of the Hong Kong Institute for Public Opinion Research. “Many other young people will choose to leave, if they have the possibility”.
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