Backlash Ensues as Nicole Kidman is Allowed to Skip Quarantine Procedures in Hong Kong

Even though Hong Kong has some of the most strict quarantining mandates, it’s as if they are picking and choosing to whom they apply.

Hong Kong residents must quarantine for up 21 days in a hotel when coming from a high-risk area — regardless of vaccination status — or seven days plus seven more days of self-monitoring.

Those rules apparently don’t apply to the Australian native Nicole Kidman or her film crew, as they have been granted an exemption “to carry out designated professional work.”

Kidman flew into Hong Kong on a private jet on August 12 and has been seen walking about and shopping two days after she arrived in the city.

Her arrival into the country came just days after Hong Kong tightened up its quarantine rules. Kidman should’ve been tucked away for a week in her hotel room.

Yet, many Hong Kong citizens haven’t been able to leave the city and travel overseas in nearly two years. Locals are furious that a celebrity has been granted freedoms that they have been denied for so long.

On Twitter, Whovian Booknerd said, “So we have HK residents who can’t come back if not vaccinated (and even then with 2-3 weeks quarantine) but Nicole Kidman can just enter like this? It’s disgusting!”

Others take the filming as a slight due to the nature of the subject matter. Kidman’s series is about the city’s wealthy foreign elite during a real-world crisis as China is plunging into financial dissent.

Pro-Beijing lawmaker, Elizabeth Quat, said she had “concerns over the quarantine exemption granted by the government to actress Nicole Kidman” and that she had “received quite a number of complaints from Hong Kong residents.”

Exemptions like the one Kidman was granted are extremely rare.

Even Mark Tucker, the chairman of one of the world’s largest banks (HSBC), was required to undergo a three-week hotel quarantine after he flew in from the U.K.

According to Deadline, the South China Morning Post reported a statement was released from The Commerce and Economic Development Bureau confirming the actress had been “granted permission to travel to Hong Kong with a quarantine exemption” and that her filming work is “conducive to maintain the necessary operation and development of Hong Kong’s economy.”

Kidman has also received preferential treatment in her home country of Australia, as she side-stepped their quarantine rules earlier this year. She and other celebrities were granted an exception and quarantined at home rather than at a hotel. The ‘non-elites are not given such exemptions.

 

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