Opinion | Hong Kong can beat Covid-19 by playing to one of its strengths – its private medical sector

Private hospitals should be deployed at scale to provide urgent care to low-risk, Covid-19-negative patients to ease pressure on overburdened public hospitals

While the public system can focus on the Covid-19 battle at hand, private hospitals can help restore more compassionate policies for other patients

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A woman holds a child while sitting at a makeshift treatment area outside a hospital on February 17. A successful Covid-19 policy relies on two crucial factors: a high vaccination rate and a health care system that is not overburdened. Photo: Reuters

Published: 6:45am, 23 Feb 2022

The current Omicron situation has already overwhelmed our public hospitals. As an obstetrician, I have experienced the impact this has had on my own patients and how this has led to serious, disproportionate physical and mental health implications for pregnant women, mothers and children, as well as other vulnerable groups.

Some public hospitals are no longer able to allow parents to stay with sick children due to a lack of available isolation rooms and other resources. Admission of coronavirus-positive children and new Covid-19 policies have further stretched resources and reduced parental access to their children.

We know that the trauma of illness for children is significantly exacerbated by being separated from parents and being taken away from a familiar environment.

Maternity departments in public hospitals are also under pressure dealing with an upsurge in coronavirus-positive women. Labour wards no longer allow patients to be accompanied when giving birth. We know that outcomes are worse if women are unable to have the support of their partners during delivery.

Added to this, in many hospitals, mothers are no longer allowed to visit their babies in neonatal intensive care units. Understandably, doctors and nurses struggling with increasing Covid-19 admissions and isolation procedures have less time to provide reassurance or emotional support.

Crucially, medical professionals estimate that fewer than 40 per cent of pregnant women in Hong Kong are vaccinated; this will add to the burden on maternity units as Omicron infections increase.

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