Hospital Beds Quickly Running Out, Doctors Warn

The head of the Hong Kong Public Doctors' Association, Arisina Ma, has warned that 400 additional isolation beds that the Hospital Authority (HA) has recently freed up may still not be enough to cope with a surge in Covid-19 cases.

A recent surge in coronavirus patients due to the return of large numbers of people from abroad has put tremendous pressure on the public healthcare system – with isolation beds running short and confirmed cases having to wait before they're admitted to hospital.

To ease the shortage, the HA has converted some general wards to makeshift isolation wards. While these ‘second-tier’ wards have negative air pressure to ensure the virus can’t get out and all the necessary equipment to treat Covid-19 patients, Ma said they don’t have quite the same level of protection as fully-fledged isolation wards.

For example, she said there are only single doors at these second-tier facilities, as opposed to two sets at proper isolation wards.

Ma said as such, these makeshift facilities are best used to treat recovering patients with a low viral load.

She estimates that around 80 percent of the 600 patients currently in hospital are in the recovery stage, and the tier-one beds should be reserved for all new cases for at least a week.

"These 400 beds is mainly for those patients who are less contagious or who have been stabilized, so we can only rely on the tier one isolation beds for the newly-diagnosed patients," she said.

"So if the pandemic goes worse, we’re going to need to admit, let’s say, two to 300 new cases per day maybe, even if we open these 400 beds, we cannot cope with the rapid rise in newly-confirmed cases.”

When asked by Hong Kong Today if medical workers had enough protective equipment, Ma said "right now, the situation is still manageable", but warned that they may run out of equipment if the pandemic goes on for a few more months to a year.

"It really depends on how long the disease or pandemic lasts; if let’s say the pandemic is going to last even a few more months or even a year, I think we may run out of protective equipment sooner or later, because although the Hospital Authority is trying to sort out the protective equipment from different parts of the world, but actually in the current situation, they have reported to us that it is currently extremely difficult.”

Ma's comments come after Civic Party lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki told another RTHK programme that if Hong Kong continues to see 40 to 50 new cases per day, then the additional hospital beds will be used up within a week.

Kwok also suggested the government look into converting the Wan Chai Convention and Exhibition Centre into a temporary hospital that can either treat patients with mild symptoms or who are recovering from the disease, in order to relieve the pressure from the city's isolation wards.