PLANS TO GET MORE HELP FROM PRIVATE HOSPITALS
Officials in talks with sector to ease burden on public health system, while Vice-Premier Han Zheng urges city to tackle weaknesses in Covid-19 fight
The government is drawing up plans to require private hospitals to provide beds and designated clinics for coronavirus patients in an arrangement similar to asking hotels to offer quarantine facilities, as a state leader again questioned the private sector’s reported reluctance to do more.
Senior officials have been meeting heads of private hospitals, the Post has learned, to press for more support to ease the burden on a public health care system pushed to the brink trying to cope with the fifth wave of infections.
None of the city’s 13 private hospitals admit walk-ins who have tested positive for Covid-19, according to a Post survey yesterday, and at least three said they did not provide outpatient treatment for such patients or their close contacts, as well as for non-coronavirus patients with respiratory symptoms.
A source involved in the discussions said the administration had been working on plans to secure the private sector’s support in three areas – to take over more non-Covid patients, to provide beds and to designate clinics for those who tested positive.
“Like how [Carrie] Lam met with the hotel sector to enlist support for the provision of quarantine rooms, now it’s the private hospitals’ turn,” the source said, referring to the chief executive’s high-level meeting with hotel owners last month in which she expressed hope that at least 10,000 rooms could be made available for isolation purposes.
Hong Kong logged 25,150 new infections yesterday and a record 161 deaths. A much-delayed government platform for Covid-19 patients to declare their positive rapid antigen tests went live at 6pm, with more than 100,000 people joining the online queue within an hour of its launch.
With mainland experts over the weekend weighing in on the timing of a coming mass testing drive, a source from across the border yesterday said Beijing had no “hard and fast” rule on when and how the exercise should be conducted.
Transport minister Frank Chan Fan also said public transport would be maintained during the screening drive, and at least one person in each household would be allowed to go out to buy daily necessities.
Separately, Beijing officials at the country’s annual parliamentary sessions had in their sights Hong Kong’s private hospitals for a second day, chastising the sector for shunning Covid-19 patients when public health facilities had been overwhelmed.
Vice-Premier Han Zheng, who heads the Communist Party’s leading group on Hong Kong and Macau affairs, was quoted as saying in a meeting with 17 of Hong Kong’s deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC) that the city must work on weaknesses in its fight against the coronavirus.
“The vice-premier said he noticed news reports about some private hospitals being reluctant to take Covid-19 patients. He said he hoped that was ‘fake news’,” said NPC delegate Chan Yung, spokesman for the Hong Kong delegation.
But lawmakers and analysts have also said authorities did not make any serious effort earlier to tap the resources of private hospitals, only piling pressure on now.
Han called on local authorities to take “strong and decisive measures” to reduce the death rate and prioritise care for the elderly.
Hours after the high-level talks in Beijing, CUHK Medical Centre, a private teaching hospital owned by Chinese University in Ma Liu Shui, announced that an isolation ward of 24 beds, or a fifth of its total, had been converted to admit Covid-19 patients referred from public hospitals, the city’s first and only private facility to do so.
All private hospitals had made clear in their policies that walk-in Covid patients were not accepted into their wards. A Post check revealed that at least three did not offer outpatient treatment for such patients or their close contacts, as well as for people with respiratory conditions but that were not coronavirus-related. They were Evangel Hospital, St Teresa’s Hospital and Precious Blood Hospital.
“We will ask you to leave if you have a cough or fever. Please don’t waste your time and money … We hope you understand we have to protect our doctors and patients,” a staff member at Evangel Hospital in Kowloon City told a Post reporter inquiring as a potential patient yesterday.
CUHK Medical Care, Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong, Baptist Hospital and St Paul’s Hospital pledged to provide outpatient treatment to Covid-19 patients, while telemedicine was the only option for Canossa Hospital and Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital.
At least five hospitals required recovered patients who tested negative to wait for six to 14 days before allowing them to enter the premises, the Post found.
A spokesman for Canossa disclosed that only half the hospital’s beds were occupied. But it could not admit Covid-19 patients due to manpower shortage, and it had only one negative pressure room.
A spokeswoman for Matilda International Hospital said it did not have negative pressure rooms and had no access to treatment drugs, therefore it focused on increasing the intake of patients requiring urgent surgery for cancer. “The hospital is now studying the possibility of developing a ward area with a unidirectional airflow system,” she said.
A Baptist Hospital spokeswoman said about nine out of 10 of its isolation rooms were occupied by Covid-19 patients diagnosed to have caught the virus after admission, adding they were now converting six single rooms to accommodate more cases.
The Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital said two isolation wards had been designated for patients diagnosed with the virus after admission. Telemedicine consultations would be arranged for other positive cases at a targeted area in the hospital.
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong Adventist Hospital on Stubbs Road said it had acted in accordance with the authorities’ guideline to advise Covid-19
Like how [Carrie] Lam met with the hotel sector ... now it’s the private hospitals’ turn
A SOURCE INVOLVED IN THE DISCUSSIONS
We hope you understand we have to protect our doctors and patients
STAFF MEMBER AT EVANGEL HOSPITAL
patients with mild symptoms to visit the government’s designated clinics.
Dr William Ho Shiu-wei, chairman of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association, told a radio programme that some individuals might have misunderstandings about private hospitals, and this might have been passed on to the chief executive.
Authorities had never asked private hospitals to admit Covid patients, he said, adding the sector had conducted hundreds of surgeries, computerised tomography scans and magnetic resonance imaging scans on patients referred from public hospitals.