Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority (IA) has closed its offices in Wong Chuk Hang and North to the general public, beginning Friday until further notice, due to soaring COVID-19 cases in the city.
Aside from a skeleton workforce, the IA’s staff will work from home for the time being. Operation of the IA’s inquiry and complaint hotline services will continue as normal, the regulator said. Email responses to enquiries and complaints will also remain uninterrupted.
The IA said that it will continue to monitor the situation and will announce any updates on its website.
The surge in infections comes right after the Lunar New Year, one of the most important holidays in Hong Kong and other Chinese-speaking cultures worldwide.
Hong Kong recorded 131 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 14,715, Xinhua reported. Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced a series of updated anti-epidemic measures that will come into effect soon.
These include the re-establishment of a temporary air-inflated laboratory to support additional COVID-19 testing, the release of the sixth round of the anti-epidemic fund, and the implementation of the vaccine pass and universal rapid antigen testing across Hong Kong, the report said.
Since beginning the vaccination programme in February 2021, 4.83 million people, or 71.8 % of the eligible population, have received at least two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in Hong Kong.
