Pandemic situation in Hong Kong to improve with concerted efforts: chief executive of Hospital Authority

HONG KONG -- The COVID-19 pandemic in still raging in Hong Kong, but the situation will improve with the concerted efforts from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government departments and agencies, the Hospital Authority chief executive has said.

In a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua, Tony Ko Pat-sing said the main difference between the current fifth wave of coronavirus infection in Hong Kong and the previous ones is that the highly transmissible Omicron variant is now the dominant strain of the pandemic.

Noting that the latest COVID-19 wave has put a strain on Hong Kong's health care system, Ko said currently, Hong Kong's public hospitals are understaffed, and there have no enough isolation beds for the increasing number of patients.

Though facing heavy workload, the medical staff in public hospitals are working very hard, and no one is leaving work for fear of infection, Ko said.

More than 98 percent of the Hospital Authority staff have been vaccinated against COVID-19, and they are also required to take rapid antigen tests before going to work every day, he said.

"We have been supported by the whole country over the past two years and are more than adequate in terms of protection equipment, so we feel much relieved," he added.

Ko said the Hospital Authority has been trying its best to reduce mortality in confirmed patients, severe cases, and the transmission of the virus.

"We first recruit retired colleagues, while inviting doctors working for private hospitals to join us to solve the shortage of staff," Ko said, adding they have increased the number of public hospitals converting general beds to isolation beds.

Drawing on the successful experiences of the mainland in fighting the epidemic, Ko said they have adopted a hierarchical approach of diagnosis and treatment, assigning patients to community isolation facilities, mobile cabin COVID-19 hospitals built with the support of the central government, and local hospitals according to their severity of illness.

In addition, the HKSAR government announced on Wednesday that Queen Elizabeth Hospital would be converted to a designated hospital for COVID-19 patients, which Ko said is very important.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the largest general hospital in Hong Kong, and it is located at the center of Hong Kong with a large number of beds for patients, according to Ko.

Ko said this arrangement can help better achieve what the experts suggest that the infected are treated in dedicated medical facilities where medical specialists and all the necessary medical resources are concentrated.

"We have started to arrange for those non-COVID-19 patients to be transferred to other Hospital Authority hospitals and private hospitals so that Queen Elizabeth Hospital can focus its efforts on treating COVID-19 patients," Ko added.