HK Hospitals Boost Covid Measures After Outbreak

The Hospital Authority said on Monday that it is stepping up infection control measures at all public hospitals after a Covid-19 outbreak left one facility running low on staff.

Nineteen patients and medical workers at the United Christian Hospital have tested positive for coronavirus, prompting officials to put dozens of members of staff there in quarantine.

The cluster of cases is believed to have been sparked by an 84-year-old "super-spreader" patient.

The authority's chief infection control officer, Dr Raymond Lai, said that from now on, a second test will be conducted on hospital patients who display Covid symptoms, two days after they are admitted, to reduce the risk of false negative results.

Medical staff are also being told to wear extra personal protective equipment, such as a goggles, when they feed patients or help them clean their mouths, and the authority is considering asking frontline staff to have regular Covid tests, Lai added.

Among other measures, Lai said people who are granted hospital visits on compassionate grounds will also be asked to take a coronavirus test.

Meanwhile, the head of the authority, Dr Tony Ko, said United Christian Hospital is having to reduce some non-essential services being as so many of its staff are in quarantine.

He said Covid patients will not be sent there for the time being to reduce the demand on the hospital's services.

"We still have quite a significant number of isolation beds available in our different hospitals ... We also have hundreds of beds in the Asia-World Expo to take care of relatively stable Covid patients," Ko said.

"So we think that with the suspension of allocating Covid patients to United Christian Hospital, it's a way we can help to alleviate some the pressure at the same time without significantly affecting our capability to look after Covid patients."

The authority's chief manager, Dr Sara Ho, told the media that coronavirus had been found on a water tap near the bed of the "super-spreader" patient, although environmental samples taken elsewhere all came back negative.

She said the authorities were looking into whether the sharing of various items was allowing the virus to spread.