Hong Kong: Hong Kong is to ban all incoming flights from the United Kingdom from July 1 to contain the more contagious Delta strain of the coronavirus, the financial hub's government said in a statement on Monday.
"All passenger flights from the UK will be stopped from landing in Hong Kong," the statement said.
The UK will now be designated an "extremely high-risk" category of countries, it said, the city's highest rating for pandemic travel.
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The latest measures on the Delta version, first found in India, will ban passengers who have been in the city for more than two hours from boarding passenger flights into the UK.
Officials said they upgraded anti-epidemic measures in the wake of the "recent rebound" of the pandemic and the "widespread delta variant virus strain" in the UK.
The Hong Kong government said the city had recorded several cases of a mutation linked to the L452R virus strain, Delta, of people arriving from the UK.
The city confirmed its first local COVID case linked to the delta variant last week, ending its 16-day streak of zero local cases.
British officials have said the delta variant has become the dominant coronavirus strain in their region.
Britain was due to fully ease restrictions on 21 June, but the emergence of variants has led to an expansion of social distancing rules.
Hong Kong has already banned flights from several other countries over the rising cases and Prominence of the Delta strain, including the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
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