Coronavirus: Hong Kong medical workers vote down plans to extend their strike having earlier escalated their action by occupying key floors of Hospital Authority headquarters

Hong Kong’s striking hospital workers have voted down a plan to extend their industrial action but insisted they will continue to fight for better protection against the deadly new coronavirus and the full closure of the city’s border with mainland China.

The Hospital Authority Employees Alliance on Friday announced it would vote to decide whether to press ahead with the work boycott until next Wednesday. It garnered only 3,000 votes, short of the 6,000 vote – 30 per cent of its total membership – the union called for, while 4,000 voted against a further strike.

“It doesn’t mean we are giving up,” the alliance’s chairwoman Winnie Yu Wai-ming said, announcing the end of the strike. She said they would use other ways to fight for their demands as she announced a new fund set up to support those who might face difficulties because of the strike.

A teary-eyed Yu led her team to bow in apology for the disruptions that have affected, among others, cancer patients, ailing infants, and expectant mothers. “I hereby offer my most sincere apology to any people affected,” she said.

Hours before the strike ended, medical workers in the city had escalated their action on the fifth day by occupying key floors of the Hospital Authority’s headquarters. Hundreds of doctors and nurses from the alliance took to the fourth and fifth floors of the authority’s complex in Kowloon City to stage a sit-in and chant demands outside top management’s offices, while others occupied the lobby.