Hong Kong’s decision to grant Hollywood star Nicole Kidman a quarantine exemption as she films an Amazon-funded series about the lives of made expats has sparked public anger.
The Chinese financial hub maintains a number of the strictest quarantine measures within the world, an approach that has kept virus cases low but left most residents stop from overseas loved ones for the last 18 months.
Arrivals from high-risk countries need to stay in hotel quarantine for 21 days, while lower-risk countries have seven days hotel quarantine followed by an extra seven days of self-monitoring.
But Kidman, 54, has been allowed to bypass those rules.
Hong Kong’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau confirmed the Australian actress and other film crew had been granted an exemption “to do designated professional work”.
Those exempted must take three coronavirus tests over fortnight following their arrival.
The city’s tabloids have closely followed Kidman’s appearances in urban center since touching down last Thursday in an exceedingly private jet from Australia, including shopping two days after her arrival and later filming within the city’s Sai Wan district.
Kidman has been announced as an executive producer on “Expats”, a show supported a 2016 book by Janice YK Lee about the gilded lives of three American women within the city.
Social media has since crammed with comments by expats and native Hong Kongers over Kidman’s quarantine exemption — and therefore the decision to film a series about the city’s wealthy foreign elite at a time when China is purging dissent within the financial hub.
“Right then, that’s it. My Mum is changing her name to ‘Nicole Kidman’ and i have just sent my Gulfstream G650 to select her up,” @webbhk, an account popular expats, wrote on Twitter.
“I’m visiting make a movie about her visit to HK. It’s called, imaginatively, ‘My Mum Visits Hong Kong’,” the account added.
A popular support group on Facebook for people quarantining in metropolis also full of angry comments about what number local and foreign residents are unable to determine relatives overseas for nearly two years thanks to the foundations.
Elizabeth Quat, a pro-Beijing lawmaker, said she had “concerns over the quarantine exemption granted by the govt. to actress Nicole Kidman” which she had “received quite an number of complaints from port residents”.
Quat added that she had asked health officials to deal with a legislature committee on the difficulty on Friday.
While quarantine exemptions will be made for a few senior executives, they’re rare.
HSBC’s chairman Mark Tucker just completed the complete three weeks of quarantine for arrivals from Britain.
Kidman’s exemption came just days after Hong Kong tightened its quarantine rules for multiple countries, throwing the travel plans of the many into disarray towards the top of the summer holidays and sparking a shortage of hotel rooms.
