Editorial | The billions spent on isolation facilities in Hong Kong must not go to waste
- Temporary hospitals and other infrastructure built to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic are no longer needed but what to do with them next is a conundrum
In the early days of the pandemic, millions in China tuned in to a live stream showing thousands of workers in Wuhan rushing to build temporary hospitals. Completed in 10 days, the two structures provided 2,300 beds to help the city’s overwhelmed medical system survive the world’s first outbreak of Covid-19. Over the next three years of the pandemic, emergency clinics, test centres and isolation camps were built across China, including in Hong Kong, at a massive cost.
Under measures Beijing announced in November to ease virus restrictions, 63 makeshift hospitals were tendered for construction across China. The mainland might have spent 25.4 billion yuan (US$3.75 billion) last year on construction of makeshift hospitals, based on a report by Minsheng Securities in May. With the additional 739.3 billion yuan spent on nucleic acid testing sites, the outlay was higher than Luxembourg’s 2022 gross domestic product.
Hong Kong authorities earmarked HK$12 billion (US$1.5 billion) to build isolation facilities from scratch last February amid the city’s fifth and deadliest wave. Nine isolation centres now sit on over 72 hectares, an area big enough for about 86 football fields. The structures quickly have quickly fallen into disuse since mainland China abandoned its zero-Covid policy in December and as Hong Kong eases its own pandemic restrictions. The city’s last few hundred patients in isolation were allowed to go home last Monday.
Authorities must now carefully consider what happens next with the facilities. It is right to expect those responsible to do everything possible to minimise waste and ensure that resources that can be recovered are used fairly.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said the city’s isolation buildings may be dismantled or repurposed after a review. City leaders have been urged to come up with alternative plans. Suggestions so far include turning the buildings into worker dormitories, healthcare training centres or flats.
Among the isolation units at Kai Tak, there is already a mock-up flat for short-term “light public housing” for residents who have been waiting for subsidised homes for at least three years. Such plans face resistance from some area residents and developers planning an upmarket residential zone for the former airport area.
The debate about the fate of isolation camps has some experts suggesting that hospitals and stadiums should be improved so they can be rapidly converted for quarantine purposes in the future. Examining how temporary facilities played a role in the current pandemic response would be time well spent. It is important that in our haste to return to economic normality, we do not ignore lessons to be learned from pandemic white elephants.