Hong Kong to Shut Schools to Fight Omicron; Foreigners Rush to Leave

Within hours of the city’s top official saying late Tuesday that schools would be closed and turned into response centers to tackle a surge in the Covid-19 Omicron variant, a rush occurred among foreign residents to find a way out of the city. Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s decision to shift the summer holidays forward several months to start in March—repurposing schools as testing, vaccination and isolation centers—caught educators and parents off guard. Some foreign workers immediately tried to book their families on flights out of the city as soon as possible. They took to WhatsApp messaging groups and other social-media platforms to discuss how to get out, with hundreds of posts inquiring about flight options and chartering planes amid sharply reduced commercial schedules in and out of the city. Heads of international schools sent hastily composed emails to parents and staffers saying that they would meet with the city’s education department Wednesday to try to mitigate the situation. One urged parents not to act hastily.