Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the harsher measures were essential since the city was on the cusp of a larger coronavirus epidemic following the community's discovery of an unrelated Omicron case.

Hong Kong reimposed some of its strictest Covid-19 restrictions on Wednesday, prohibiting flights from eight countries, including India, until January 21, in an effort to stem the escalating number of Omicron cases.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-Ngor announced that visitors from eight countries – Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including transit – will be barred from returning to the city for two weeks beginning Saturday, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

Hong Kong is reimposing some of its strongest Covid-19 restrictions across the board, including a 6 p.m. curfew on all dine-in services and a ban on flights from eight countries, according to the Post, as it braces for a fifth wave of infections due to Omicron worries.

Hong Kong is a Chinese Special Administrative Region and major aviation and financial center.

Lam stated that the stricter measures were essential since the city was on the cusp of a larger coronavirus epidemic as a result of the community's finding of an unrelated Omicron case.

"There has been a dramatic change in the pandemic scenario, which has concerned us." "We will announce today quick, decisive, and specific actions to sever the transmission chains," Lam said during a news briefing.

The passenger flight restriction will be in force until January 21.

Travelers who have recently visited or transited through those nations will be prevented from returning to the city for two weeks.

She emphasized the importance of the restrictions in avoiding imported cases, particularly ones containing the highly transmissible Omicron form, from spreading further in the community and preventing public hospitals from becoming overburdened with Covid-19 patients.

Lam expressed optimism that impacted firms would recognize the "decisive, fast, and aggressive" measures taken to combat the infection.

"We will take strong and tough efforts to limit the Omicron variety in a very short period of time," she stated.

Professor Yuen Kwok-Yung, a leading microbiologist, said that a fifth Covid-19 wave was "technically" ongoing, and added that a number of untraced cases were surfacing in the community, with health officials still trying to figure out where they came from.

Professor Gabriel Leung, Dean of the University of Hong Kong's college of medicine and a fellow government adviser, predicted that if a community breakout occurred, it would take at least three to six months to effectively contain the epidemic.

"If such is the case, the proposal to open the border would fail once more," he warned, referring to a prospective program to reinstate quarantine-free travel with mainland China.

According to the Post, Hong Kong confirmed 38 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the official number to 12,799 cases with 213 deaths.

On Wednesday, India recorded a single-day increase of 58,097 new coronavirus infections, the most in over 199 days, bringing the total number of cases to 3,50,18,358. According to the health ministry, the number of active patients surpassed 2 lakh after 81 days.