New health forms brought in at West Kowloon

Passengers arriving via high speed rail were generally happy to fill in the new health declaration forms, though one tourist said she neglected to fill in questions about her health. Photo: RTHK

Jimmy Choi reports

Travellers arriving in Hong Kong via the high speed rail network on Friday began filling out mandatory health declaration forms – as part of government measures to ward off the widening Wuhan virus outbreak that’s spread across the country, killing at least 25.



Acting Chief Executive Matthew Cheung announced the new measure on Thursday night, shortly after authorities confirmed the territory’s first two cases of the new coronavirus.



But there appeared to be some confusion on Friday morning, with one mainland traveller RTHK spoke to saying that while she had duly filled out her personal information, as well as her seat and train numbers, she thought she didn’t have to fill in any details about her health condition.



“What information? I don’t think I filled it in. If you’re normal you don’t have to fill it in right? And if you’re not normal you have to fill it in. I’m normal, so I don’t have to fill it in”, she said.



Other passengers did a more thorough job and filled in everything they were supposed to.



A man who arrived in West Kowloon from Guangzhou said he was happy to comply with the new requirement.



“Especially with what’s happening, I don’t mind filling up anything you tell me to do”, he said. “I can see that they are definitely taking care, they’re definitely making sure that every passenger is coming through properly, which is good.”



But another passenger who arrived from Shenzhen was more sceptical about the effectiveness of the declaration forms.



I’m not sure, I feel I guess it could be more stringent? Well they were checking temperatures, which I guess is nice, but just self-filling out forms… I’m not sure if that’s necessary” he said.



“Maybe if it was really stringent then there would be doctors here checking all kinds of stuff before you come in”, he suggested.