Hong Kong makes masks mandatory in public with city ‘on verge of large-scale outbreak’

Leader Carrie Lam warns Hong Kong’s healthcare system is at risk of ‘collapse’, as Adam Withnall reports

Restaurants in Hong Kong now only allowed to offer takeaway (EPA)

Hong Kong introduced its toughest restrictions on Wednesday since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, making face coverings mandatory in all public spaces and ending dining-in at restaurants, as the city’s leader said it was facing a “large-scale outbreak”.

The city won praise early on in the crisis for reducing imported cases and bringing in effective quarantine and contact-tracing measures, recording only about 3,000 infected people in total since January, of whom 24 have died.

However, the Chinese territory’s government reported 118 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and is now regularly seeing more than 100 infections a day, having at one point brought its outbreak down to single figures added daily.