Macau casino shares yesterday plunged as the Chinese territory embarked on a week-long lockdown to curb its worst COVID-19 outbreak, while neighboring Hong Kong said it was mulling a mainland-style health code system.
Share prices of six gaming conglomerates — Sands China, Galaxy Entertainment, SJM Holdings, Melco International, MGM China and Wynn Macau — fell by between 6 and nearly 9 percent in yesterday morning trade.
It is the first casino lockdown in more than two years, overriding a previous deal between the industry and the Macau government that only those found with infections would need to close temporarily.
Photo: Reuters
Macau, the world’s biggest gambling hub, is the only place in China where casinos are legal, but the COVID-19 pandemic has hammered its fortunes as it adheres to Beijing’s “zero COVID-19” model.
While casinos have remained open throughout most of the pandemic they have seen a fraction of pre-COVID-19 business.
A Bloomberg gauge of the territory’s six licensed casino operators is down 20 percent this year.
Authorities announced a week of lockdowns starting yesterday after recording more than 1,500 infections in the past three weeks despite multiple rounds of compulsory mass testing of Macau’s 650,000 people.
All residents must stay home except to go shopping for daily necessities and to get tested for the virus, with rule-breakers facing up to two years in jail.
Some public services and businesses such as supermarkets and pharmacies can stay open, and only people with special permission or a low-risk health code can use public transportation.
China uses mandatory health code apps to trace people’s movements and COVID-19 outbreaks. Only those with green codes can move freely.
It is a system that Hong Kong’s government is now considering employing, Hong Kong Secretary of Health Lo Chung-mau (盧寵茂) said yesterday.
“So-called freedom can sometimes be easily confused with selfishness,” Lo told public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong.
“Infected people should not have the freedom to go wherever they want and affect our health,” he added.
Hong Kong is being remolded in the authoritarian mainland’s image after huge democracy protests three years ago.
The territory has hewed to a lighter version of the “zero COVID-19” model, which has battered the economy and left Hong Kong internationally cut off for more than two years.
The newly installed administration of Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超), a former security official, has vowed to stamp out infections and restart travel to the mainland and outside world.
To do that, authorities might need to deploy more mainland-style mass monitoring of the population.
Hong Kong currently uses a less restrictive mobile phone app than the mainland one, which keeps a resident’s vaccination record and is used to check into businesses and venues.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant