HONG KONG — Hong Kong has decided to ban flights from India, Pakistan, and the Philippines for 14 days beginning on Tuesday (April 20) after a rise in COVID-19 cases in those countries. "India, Pakistan, and the Philippines all had a seven-day cumulative number of relevant cases that reached the relevant criteria in the past 14 days, and the government will therefore invoke the place-specific flight suspension mechanism for these three places,” a government spokesman said. The N501Y mutation was detected for the first time in Hong Kong, prompting the temporary ban "on places where there had been imported cases confirmed by arrival tests that carried the N501Y mutant strain," the spokesman added. Two coronavirus variants first identified in South Africa and the United Kingdom share a mutation known as N501Y that scientists worry could allow the virus to evade the immune protection generated by a vaccine. Hong Kong has some of the world"s strictest coronavirus travel restrictions, including mandatory 21 days hotel quarantine for many travelers arriving in the Chinese territory. The city has reported a total of 11,684 Covid-19 cases and 209 deaths from the virus since the pandemic began. India on Monday reported 273,810 new COVID-19 cases, a record-high and its fifth consecutive day of more than 200,000 new infections. The country has reported more than one million cases in the past five days alone. On Monday, Pakistan reported 5,512 new coronavirus infections and 73 virus-related deaths while the Philippines saw 9,628 new cases and 88 more fatalities. — Agencies