Private Hospitals Asked To Help In Covid Testing

The Hospital Authority (HA) is reaching out to private hospitals to see if they can take over some of the testing for coronavirus, as demand surges amid a spike in infections.

During an online seminar organised by the Our Hong Kong Foundation, HA chairman Henry Fan said the authority’s testing capacity has been stretched to the limit, with around 6,000 tests now conducted each day, treble the initial average.

“We are beginning to see queues at various places, for example Chinese medicine clinics and so forth, where people want to get tested”, he said.

Fan said he was already in discussions with hospitals that have the needed laboratory capacity to see whether they can help.

And, while the HA says it still has hundreds of spare isolation beds for more Covid-19 patients in public hospitals, Fan said it would still be helpful if some patients who were now recovering from the illness and are no longer infectious, can be transferred to private hospitals.

Another speaker at the webinar, former Health Secretary EK Yeoh, said while it’s good for the government to now enlist the help of the private sector, this should have been done a long time ago.

He said private clinics could have played a bigger role in identifying potential coronavirus sufferers, noting that many people elect to go to private doctors when they’re sick.

He said it makes sense to expand the HA’s testing capacity by using labs in private hospitals.

“I think initially we involved them less but now the government’s involving them”, Yeoh said.

“So they are quite an important so-called sentinel site to really look at when the government’s looking at expanding testing.”