Patients lay in beds as they wait at a temporary holding area outside Caritas Medical Centre on Wednesday
(Picture: Getty Images)Hong Kong healthcare facilities are overflowing with patients amid a surge in Covid cases in the region.
Cases have topped 2,000 a day this week as the city government sticks to his “zero Covid” strategy.
Due to the large number of cases driven by the Omicron variant, some patients have been left outside hospitals draped in blankets.
The city’s Caritas Medical Centre was forced to treat patients outside the building on Wednesday due to the number of admissions, while tents were also set up as makeshift holding facilities.
Daisy Ho, a 70-year-old housewife, blamed the “zero Covid” strategy for the situation, saying: “The reason why our society has become chaotic like this today is all because of this policy.
“The organisational skill of the government has made Hong Kong people feel so hopeless.”
Yancey Yau, a construction worker, said hospital workers are now beginning to buckle under the heavy stress they are suffering due to the wave of cases.
She said: “They are working so hard. But the government is not doing what they should do.
“The hospital workers are just miserable. I hope more citizens will support them. I don’t have any hope for this government.”
Dr Sara Ho, the chief manager for patient safety and risk management at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, said thousands of citizens are waiting to be admitted after testing positive for Covid.
“This situation is undesirable,” she said. “Therefore, we are looking for ways with the government to set up more isolation facilities. We hope to shorten the patients' waiting time.”
Such is the worsening Covid picture in Hong Kong, Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed Vice Premier Han Zheng to urge the local government “as an overriding task” to take control of the situation as the “zero Covid” strategy breaks down.
Under current guidelines, those who test positive are required to quarantine either in hospitals if they have serious symptoms or in government-run facilities for light or asymptomatic cases.
VIDEO: Two Hong Kong hospitals begin placing patients in beds outside their entrances, as medical facilities struggle to cope with the city's worst #coronavirus wave to date pic.twitter.com/9HnNFFHEgX
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 16, 2022
China has been able to control the virus within its borders by maintaining a strict “zero tolerance” policy that involves total lockdowns, extensive contact tracing and mass testing millions of people. The strategy seeks to contain outbreaks as soon as they are detected.
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has stuck to the strategy despite geographical and other differences between the city and other parts of China.
Last week, the entire upscale Discovery Bay neighborhood in Hong Kong was ordered to undergo testing after authorities found traces of the virus in its sewage.
By contrast, the city-state of Singapore, which is similarly sized to Hong Kong with a population of some 5.7 million compared to 7.5 million, undertook strict lockdown measures early in the pandemic but is now pursuing a “living with Covid” approach.
The number of new cases per capita in Singapore has skyrocketed with the arrival of Omicron, with 1,911 new cases per million people reported on Monday, versus 66 per million in Hong Kong, according to Our World in Data.
But people testing positive who have no symptoms or only mild symptoms just need to self-quarantine at home, and even those who have more severe symptoms are told to see a physician for medical advice before going to the hospital.
