Coronavirus: Macau to reopen city as no Covid infections detected for 9 days

Macau will reopen public services and entertainment facilities, and allow dining-in at restaurants from Tuesday, authorities said, as the world's biggest gambling hub seeks a return to normalcy after finding no Covid-19 cases for nine straight days.

Beauty salons, fitness centres, and bars will be allowed to resume operations, the government said in a statement on Monday.

Health authorities require that residents wear masks when they go out, and show a negative coronavirus test within three days to enter most venues.

"There have been no community infection cases in Macau for nine consecutive days... and the risk of the spread of the coronavirus has been greatly reduced," they said.

The former Portuguese colony has reported around 1,800 infections since mid-June, when it was hit with its worst coronavirus outbreak that forced the closure of casinos and locked down most of the city.

Macau reopened its casinos on July 23, as authorities began unwinding stringent measures which required most businesses and premises to shut down.

This is the first time Macau has had to grapple with the fast spreading Omicron variant.

More than 90 per cent of Macau's residents are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, but authorities have closely followed China's zero-Covid-19 mandate, which seeks to curb all outbreaks at almost any cost, contrary to the rest of the world which is already living with the virus.

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