Inside Asian Gaming

IAG APR 2022年4月 亞博匯 52 COLUMNISTS A s recently as November of 2021, there was a certain degree of optimism that much of the world had turned the corner on the pandemic. Macau enjoyed a modest increase in tourism volume during the recent New Year’s holiday, and while visitation remained far below pre-pandemic levels, it was a welcome sign to see hotels full and people enjoying themselves in the city’s casinos. Then the Omicron variant struck, and while not nearly as lethal as previous waves, it was far more contagious. While western nations experienced a surge in December, Macau and adjacent Guangdong province managed to keep the virus at bay, owing in no small part to the PRC’s zero-COVID policy, along with technologies that allowed health authorities to move quickly to isolate those people who might have been infected, and quarantine them. Hong Kong was the first region to experience a surge. Despite utilizing similar measures as adjacent provinces, Hong Kong experienced an explosive growth in infections in February, and the virus continues to wreak havoc. Hospitals are at capacity, emergency quarantine facilities were hastily constructed to accommodate infected citizens, and until recently the city’s health authorities had been considering a city-wide lockdown along with a massive testing program to bring the virus under control. Panic buying has stripped bare the city’s supermarket shelves. Adjacent cities have not been spared Omicron’s wrath. By mid-March, Shenzhen, a city of over 17 million people that sits on the Pearl River Delta near Macau and Hong Kong, went under lockdown. Factories closed, subways and buses stopped running, and residents were ordered to stay home. Dongguan, another major city adjacent to Shenzhen, imposed a similar lockdown.