Hong Kong hospitals bring in more staff and add more beds to tackle flu outbreak
Hospitals struggle to meet 'winter surge' as death toll reaches 134; patients sleep in hallways and others wait eight hours to be admitted
The Hospital Authority will mobilise extra medical staff and add 200 more beds to tackle the record increase in patients suffering from influenza at the city's public hospitals.
The action was taken as the winter's dominant virus strain - a mutated variant of H3N2 - claimed nine more lives in the city yesterday, according to the Centre for Health Protection. This brings the death toll to 134 so far this year - one more than the same period last year. The number of severe cases this year is 207.
Dr Cheung Wai-lun, the authority's director of cluster services, said the 500 beds that had been prepared for the "winter surge" were insufficient to meet demand, with some patients at hospitals "already having to sleep in hallways".
Measures being taken to get more manpower include recruiting additional full-time and part-time doctors and nurses, utilising additional university nursing students and bringing in retired or reassigned support staff, Cheung said.
Almost half of the patients at the accident and emergency units of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei and Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin now had to wait more than eight hours before being admitted to a ward, he added.
"Medical wards are already very congested and their utilisation is already very high," said Cheung. "Inconvenience to patients is something we do not want to see …We are trying to further enhance our capacity by additional beds and recruiting additional doctors and nurses."
The situation was most severe at Queen Elizabeth, United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong and Tuen Mun Hospital with first-time admissions at 553, 554 and 638 per day, respectively. The average occupancy rate for inpatient beds was over 110 per cent at all three hospitals.