Two Infants in ICU While Venues Open Saturday
Saturday Open, What to Book
Brazil vs Morocco kicks off Sunday at 6:00am HKT at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the weekend's marquee World Cup fixture. Australia vs Türkiye follows at noon HKT, the one daytime match. Now TV carries all 104 World Cup fixtures; ViuTV has selected games at no charge.
The HK Museum of Art in Tsim Sha Tsui has waived admission this weekend for "Blooming: The Art of Gardens in East and West," which puts Monet's Water Lilies (1906), on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, alongside more than 100 artifacts from the Beijing Palace Museum and the Palace of Versailles. The show runs through July 29. Free admission on a Monet weekend means the Saturday queue will need patience.
Sam Tung Uk Museum in Tsuen Wan runs a free two-day programme through Sunday for the HK ICH Centre's tenth anniversary (the ICH Centre oversees Hong Kong's intangible cultural heritage registry): Hakka folk songs, shadow puppet shows, and guided tours of the restored Hakka walled village. Both days free. For families with young children, a free option in the New Territories this weekend.
Tiffany Blue Box Café opened Friday at Lee Gardens Three in Causeway Bay, 11am to 8pm, menus by Michelin-starred chef Agustin Balbi of Ando. Hotel Colombo closes this month. Black Sheep Restaurants has named no replacement concept and no opening date.
The Alert Behind the Queues
On Friday, the Department of Health warned that citywide COVID activity is expected to rise over the next one to two months, urging unvaccinated high-risk groups, including young children, to vaccinate. The warning arrived the same week two unvaccinated infant boys were admitted to Prince of Wales Hospital's paediatric intensive care unit with severe COVID-19, days apart. The one-year-old developed croup complications and remained critical. The 19-month-old was also admitted. Neither child had received a COVID vaccine dose. Parents taking unvaccinated young children into free museums or a packed heritage festival this weekend are doing so in the window the Department of Health described Friday as the start of an upswing.
At Ocean Park, Water World is running at full summer capacity. The park is also under active Labour Department investigation. That same Friday, June 12, Luk, a 63-year-old mechanical technician, was found unconscious outside a staff restroom at 9:08am before his shift and died at Ruttonjee Hospital at 10:33am. The Labour Department arrived at 11am to inspect; police classify the case as a person found collapsed, investigation ongoing. The Labour Department arrived at Ocean Park at 11am on June 12. It has released no findings.
The Department of Health's one-to-two-month transmission window began Friday, June 13. It runs through mid-August. The Labour Department opened its Ocean Park inspection on June 12. Both timelines are live this weekend. A family at Water World on Saturday is booking into an unresolved inspection. The Department of Health has not set a date for its next advisory. The Labour Department has not given one either.