HA Prepares For Covid Waves, 4 Imported Cases Added

The chief executive of the Hospital Authority, Tony Ko, said public hospitals are gearing up for a potential upsurge in Covid-19 cases later in the year as the city recorded four more imported coronavirus cases on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after attending a HA board meeting, Ko said there is a likelihood that Hong Kong will face another wave of infections before or during the next winter.

The outbreak in Wuhan started during last winter and some experts say colder climate is conducive for such outbreaks.

"We need to do the different maintenance works about the hardware as well as all the mechanical arrangements. We hope to take this opportunity to upgrade some of the systems, because as we know, some of the isolation facilities were built after the period of Sars, which means that some of them are already more than 10 years of different functions," he said.

"We’re also working hard to improve our testing capability, to test patients who have the potential risk of being infected with the Covid-19 virus."

Meanwhile, the Centre for Health Protection confirmed that four more people in Hong Kong tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the SAR to 1,124.

The latest patients, two males and two females aged between three and 36, had all arrived in Hong Kong from Pakistan on Tuesday.

The latest cases take the total number of infections reported here to 1,124.