Adam Wright

Opinion | If Hong Kong party animals won’t protect themselves, and us, against coronavirus’ spread, the bars, clubs and restaurants they drink at must be shut

Hong Kong’s night owls are living in an alternate reality, thronging entertainment districts and risking their health and that of staff who serve them drinks

To protect them from themselves and to safeguard community, it’s time Hong Kong ordered bars, clubs and restaurants to close and, as in UK, paid wages of staff

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Allan Zeman, chairman of the Lan Kwai Fong Group, stands in front of a signboard promoting the nightlife district in Hong Kong’s Central district. Crowds were still thronging its bars, clubs, and restaurants last week, and others elsewhere, despite official calls to practise social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Dickson Lee

Adam Wright

Published: 12:30pm, 23 Mar 2020Updated: 4:34pm, 23 Mar 2020

“Spread the love” is perhaps the most tone-deaf promotional slogan the human Petri dish of Hong Kong nightlife district Lan Kwai Fong could adopt during a pandemic, but it highlights the alternate reality the city’s dedicated night owls have been living in during the current coronavirus outbreak.

While bars and restaurants have been ordered to shut throughout Europe and parts of the United States in the interests of social distancing to minimise the risk of infected people transmitting the coronavirus, crowds of drinkers are still gathering in Lan Kwai Fong, SoHo, Wan Chai and other entertainment districts in Hong Kong. And of course they’re not wearing masks – that would only inhibit the flow of alcohol.

Of Hong Kong’s more than 300 confirmed infections, at least nine had visited bars and restaurants in Lan Kwai Fong or the nearby SoHo area in Central, including four of the new cases reported on Sunday. And after seeing the crowds that continued to congregate in the city’s entertainment districts over the weekend, we can expect more revellers to start showing symptoms in the coming days and “spread the love” a little more.

Nightlife mecca Berlin has closed its clubs. Centres of gastronomy France and Spain have closed their restaurants. New York has closed its bars. Even Amsterdam has closed its legendary “coffee shops”. So what is Hong Kong – now facing a second and more critical wave of coronavirus cases as infected people return to the city that had been coping well with the outbreak – doing with its bars, clubs and restaurants opening every night and pretending that it’s business as usual?

A nearly deserted Times Square, New York, last Thursday. The city has shut down entertainment to contain the spread of coronavirus. Reuters

Hong Kong’s food and beverage sector workers are facing a greater threat from the virus than anyone apart from frontline medical staff. They are terrified of being infected, but they're even more afraid of losing their livelihoods. So they keep their mouths shut and report for duty every night, dealing with food and drink orders shouted in their faces over loud music and handling potentially contaminated banknotes.

Still, a Change.org petition urging the government to provide assistance to the industry has struggled to attract even a few thousand signatures.