Hong Kong’s monetary authority has instructed the city’s banks to allow only vaccinated employees to enter their branches and offices, as it enforces the government’s vaccine pass policy amid a surge on Covid-19 cases.

The de facto central bank “strongly encourages” banks to admit only staff who have received at least one vaccine shot into their workplace, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said. Banks have two weeks to notify the HKMA when they would enforce the measure.

Hong Kong’s government offices and financial regulators including the HKMA, the Insurance Authority and the Mandatory Provident Schemes Authority began implementing the so-called vaccine pass policy on February 16. Staff who are unfit to receive Covid-19 vaccines on medical grounds need to be tested regularly.

“If [a bank] decides not to implement a vaccine pass arrangement, it should provide the HKMA with details of its considerations,” said the HKMA’s deputy chief executive Arthur Yuen Kwok-hang in a circular sent to all chief executives of the city’s 165 licensed banks. “In view of the recent surge in Covid-19 infections involving new, highly transmissible strains, [banks] are advised to step up their precautionary measures for protecting their staff and customers and ensuring the uninterrupted provision of essential banking services.”

Arthur Yuen Kwok-hang, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), at a media briefing on granting lofty virtual Banking licenses on 27 March 2019.

The stepped-up enforcement followed a record number of new infections in the city, which has sickened about 40,000 people, including dozens of bank employees, forcing lenders to shut one in every three branches in the city. Hong Kong’s banks operate a network of 1,100 branches and outlets in the city.

The government’s vaccine pass differs from the version that applies to the public starting on February 24. The public vaccine pass bans restaurants, cinemas, hair salons, shopping malls and supermarkets from serving unvaccinated customers.

A smartphone displaying a new function on Hong Kong’s “LeaveHomeSafe” app that displays the bearer’s vaccination QR codes, at Tsim Sha Tsui on 28 January 2022.

“The new HKMA measures will make it difficult for bank branches to reopen, but it is a necessary move amid the pandemic,” said Robert Lee Wai-wang, a lawmaker and a chairman of the Hong Kong Securities Association.

The Hong Kong Association of Banks (HKAB), the industry guild, said it supports the HKMA’s new move and urged all banks to actively study how to implement the vaccine pass, according to its statement.

Hong Kong is going through its so-called fifth wave of Covid-19 outbreak, mostly involving the highly transmissive Omicron variant, with the city recording 3,629 new infections on Friday and another 7,600 preliminary positive cases. About 40,000 people have been sickened.

The surge in cases has forced Hong Kong’s government to postpone its much-anticipated election of the city’s leader, moving the date from March 27 to May 8, according to an announcement by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, citing public health risks.