First death from virus in Hong Kong
Hospitals cut services as medical workers went on strike to demand the territory’s border with China be closed.
BEIJING — Hong Kong hospitals cut services as thousands of medical workers went on strike for a second day Tuesday to demand the border with mainland China be shut completely. The new virus caused its first death in the semi-autonomous territory, adding to growing fears it is spreading locally.
All but two of Hong Kong’s land and sea crossings with the mainland were closed at midnight after thousands of hospital workers went on strike Monday. Hong Kong health authorities reported two additional patients without any known travel to the virus epicenter, bringing the number of locally transmitted cases to four.
The growing caseload “indicates significant risk of community transmission” and could portend a “largescale” outbreak, said Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch at the Center for Health Protection.
More than 7,000 health workers joined the strike Tuesday, according to the Hospital Authority Employees’ Alliance, the strike organizer.
Hong Kong was hit hard by the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a virus from the same family as the current outbreak. Trust in Chinese authorities has plummeted following months of anti-government protests in the Asian financial hub.
The territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, criticized the strike and said the government was doing all it could to limit the flow of people across the border.
“Important services, critical operations have been affected,” including cancer treatment and care for newborns, Lam told reporters. “So I’m appealing to those who are taking part in this action: Let’s put the interests of the patients and the entire public health system above all other things.”
China reported 490 deaths and 24,324 confirmed cases Wednesday.
Outside mainland China, at least 180 cases have been confirmed, including two fatalities, the one in Hong Kong and another in the Philippines.
The patient who died in Hong Kong was a 39-yearold man who had traveled to Wuhan, the mainland city where the outbreak started. The Hospital Authority said Tuesday that he had preexisting health conditions but gave no details.
Most deaths have been among the elderly and those with other health problems, authorities said. More than 80% were over 60 years old, and more than 75% had an underlying disease, Jiao Yahui, a National Health Commission official, told a news conference Tuesday.
Dr. David Heymann, who led the World Health Organization’s response to the SARS outbreak, said it’s too early to tell when the new virus will peak, but that it appears to still be on the increase.
He said the spike in China’s caseload in recent days is partly attributable to the fact that officials have expanded their search to include milder cases, not only people with pneumonia. He declined to predict whether the virus would ultimately cause a pandemic, or worldwide outbreak.
Heymann said as the new virus starts to spread beyond China, scientists will gain a better understanding of it.
“What we will see is the clearer natural history of the disease,” he said, as those exposed to the virus “are being traced and watched very closely,” he said.
Nevertheless, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to share more data on infections outside China, adding that detailed information has been provided in only 38% of cases.
In particular, he said, “some high-income countries are well behind in sharing this vital data with WHO. Without better data, it’s very hard for us to assess how the outbreak is evolving or what impact it could have and to ensure we’re providing the most appropriate recommendations.”
In Wuhan, patients were being transferred to a new 1,000-bed hospital that was built in 10 days.