HA May Use Camps For Recovering Covid-19 Patients

The Hospital Authority says it may use holiday camps as community isolation facilities for recovering Covid-19 patients. Speaking on a commercial radio programme, the authority's chairman Henry Fan said the place should meet the criteria of being safe for patients, safe for medics, and far away from people's homes.

"We would have to take over and manage the premises," he said. "So we are now working along the lines of three criteria and we hope we'll be able to finalise this soon."

Speaking on the same radio programme, the authority's CEO Tony Ko added that, although the situation had been easing, things might change quickly and they had to be prepared in case hospital beds were full.

Fan also said it was best to avoid sending patients to Chun Yeung Estate in Fo Tan, which is being used as a quarantine centre. He said it was was unlikely they could find another housing estate for recovering patients.

Separately, Fan said he was proud of medical professionals and their fight against the epidemic but it was not up to them to decide whether medics, who joined a strike in February, should be punished. He said the strike was serious, had affected patients' rights, and that it must be dealt with according to staff management rules.

He said the Hospital Authority was a public organisation and management couldn't decide on their own whether to adopt a stringent or a lenient approach.

During the strike, thousands of medical workers stayed away from work for a week in an attempt to force the government to close the border with the mainland, which was then the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic.