New Delhi: Hong Kong authorities have exempted Hollywood star Nicole Kidman from the COVID-19 quarantine, AFP reported on Thursday, and it did not go down well with the locals.
Kidman is in Kong Kong to shoot the Amazon series Expats.
Hong Kong, a financial hub, has been able to keep its virus cases down for the past 18 months thanks to some strict quarantine measures.
People coming from high-risk countries are required to stay in a hotel quarantine for 21 days, while those coming from low-risk countries have a seven-day hotel quarantine rule, followed by another seven days of self-monitoring. It happens, according to the reports.
However, Kidman has apparently been allowed to bypass all rules as the 54-year-old was seen shopping at a boutique in the Central District just two days after he arrived last week.
However, the Bureau of Commerce and Economic Development justified this as it stated that Australian actresses and others on the film crew were exempt “to perform specified professional work”.
“The matter under discussion is the permission to travel to Hong Kong with a quarantine exemption for the purpose of carrying out specified business functions, bearing in mind that this is conducive to maintaining the essential operation and development of the Hong Kong economy, The South China Morning Post quoted the bureau as saying.
According to Hong Kong rules, however, people who have been granted such exemptions must be tested for COVID three times in two weeks after their arrival.
According to reports, Kidman arrived in Hong Kong on a private jet from Australia last Thursday and was filmed in the city’s Sai Wan district.
Kidman is the executive producer of the show, The Expats, which is based on Janice YK Lee’s 2016 book The Expatriots, about the lives of three wealthy American women in the city.
Since her arrival in Hong Kong, social media has been flooded with comments on her quarantine exemption.
“Okay, that’s it. My mother is changing her name to ‘Nicole Kidman’ and I sent my Gulfstream G650 to pick her up,” user @webbhk wrote on Twitter.
Handle wrote in another post, “I’m going to make a film about her HK visit. It’s fictionally called ‘My Mum Visits Hong Kong’.”
“So we have HK residents who can’t come back if they’re not vaccinated (and even then, with 2-3 weeks of quarantine) but Nicole Kidman can just enter like that? Yeh toh wahiyaad hai!” posted another user.
Reports said Kidman’s exemption came just days after Hong Kong tightened its COVID quarantine rules for several countries.
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