Hong Kong residents, businesspeople and visitors all have high hopes that the long-awaited lifting of the city’s travel restrictions and the end of medical supervision rules for arrivals will help put the bounce back in the economy.

But business leaders and economists said it could take more than a year for the city to recover its shine after the border with mainland China fully reopened.

The introduction of the “0+0” arrangement was welcomed as a breath of fresh air for a city stifled by three years of strict coronavirus rules – some of the toughest in the world because of the zero Covid-19 policy imposed in line with the mainland.

But, from Wednesday, the city will become one of the last places in the world to remove its travel restrictions for arrivals with the scrapping of the amber health code for people who test negative for Covid-19.

It is the biggest relaxation made by the authorities to lessen the frustration of arrivals since the start of the pandemic.

The city has gone from total closure, a maximum of 21 days quarantine down to seven days, to a further “3+4” and “0+3” this year – referring to the combination of the number of days of quarantine and medical surveillance.