HONG KONG -- The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government announced on Sunday evening that it will implement the place-specific flight suspension mechanism to India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, banning all incoming commercial passenger flights from them from landing in Hong Kong for 14 days from April 20.

Meanwhile, the HKSAR government will specify these areas as extremely high-risk over COVID-19 and restrict people who have stayed there from boarding planes to enter Hong Kong. The suspension will last 14 days.

Starting April 14, the HKSAR government implemented the tightened commercial flight suspension mechanism and the place-specific flight suspension mechanism to address the risk of importing mutant strains of COVID-19 from high-risk places.

According to the mechanism, if a total of five or more passengers in all flights from the same place were confirmed by arrival tests for COVID-19 with the N501Y mutant strain within a seven-day period, any passenger flights from that place will be prohibited from landing in Hong Kong for 14 days.