Nearly half of Hong Kong's delegates barred from China meetings due to Covid-19

As members of China's lawmaking body file into the Great Hall of the People on Saturday (March 5) to the strains of the Welcome March for the country's largest political gathering, one figure will notably be missing: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam. The Chief Executive, who is traditionally invited to attend the opening of the National People's Congress (NPC), has turned down her invite to focus on battling the city's most serious coronavirus outbreak yet, with tens of thousands of new cases reported daily this week. Nearly half of Hong Kong's almost 240 delegates, including its sole representative to the NPC Standing Committee, Mr Tam Yiu Chung, have been barred from attending or are under quarantine because of Covid-19. Beijing had ordered the deputies, as delegates are known as, to first self-quarantine in Hong Kong for a week, and undergo another week of centralised quarantine in China's Shenzhen city, before they could attend the meetings in Beijing.