HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) – Hong Kong’s onerous system of hotel quarantine for travelers was meant to stop infection from seeing into a largely Covid-19-free city.

Instead, it has become a spreading ground, seeding an Omicron variant outbreak that has led to thousands of people being locked down and calls for reform of the controversial set-up.

An outbreak at a public housing estate of more than 200 confirmed and preliminarily positive cases on Monday (Jan 24) has been traced to a traveler who caught the Omicron variant while undergoing 21 days of isolation at a hotel in Kowloon.

While she entered the hotel coronavirus free, the pathogen was transmitted to her from an infected person staying at the same hotel.

It is at least the fourth time in a year that hotels have passed infection on instead of containing them.

The severity of this particular outbreak is escalating backlash against a travel policy that is both costly and chaotic, with travelers scrambling to secure rooms that can go for as much as US$770 (S$1,000) a night amid constantly-changing rules.

“We see those quarantine hotels as a big concern,” said virologist Jin Dong-Yan at the University of Hong Kong.

“During these waves, we’ve learned that letting people isolate in their home might actually be a better choice.”

The cramped and poorly-ventilated nature of most hotels, with travelers grouped together regardless of where they’re coming from and when they entered the city, has helped the virus defy quarantine lengths of up to three weeks, one of the longest in the world .

The recent cross-infection at the Silka Seaview Hotel occurred as the city faced a surge in Omicron variant cases from returning travelers after the Christmas break, said Dr Leung Chi-chiu, former chairman of the Hong Kong Medical Association’s advisory committee on communicable diseases.

These travelers were not properly grouped “into adjacent rooms by date of entry to prevent infection of persons at the end of their quarantine by newcomers,” Dr Leung said.

The use of hotels for quarantine has been problematic in several countries, with the facilities also found to have spread infection in Australia and Singapore.

But those places have now pivoted to living with the virus, with vaccinated travelers allowed to isolate at home if necessary.

Most do not have to isolate after they test negative.

Hong Kong has continued to hew to a zero-tolerance approach along with mainland China, a strategy that has required increasingly aggressive measures as the virus mutates to become more transmissible.