Coronavirus: Hong Kong may shorten stays at quarantine centres to free up rooms as health care system comes under strain

Authorities weigh cutting period to 10 days from the current two weeks as isolation space grows tight

City records another 32 new infections, including four people who visited karaoke lounge last week

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A barbecue site closed down in Deep Water Bay in Hong Kong. Authorities have introduced tough new social distancing rules to curb the spread of Covid-19. Photo: EPA

Published: 5:27pm, 31 Mar 2020Updated: 4:24am, 1 Apr 2020

Hong Kong may shorten the length of time people spend in quarantine camps to free up much-needed space as the government faces the challenge of tackling a steadily climbing number of coronavirus infections with an already strained health care system.

The city recorded 32 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, again mostly people with a recent travel history, raising the total to 714. But entertainment venues remained a source of local transmissions, with four people who visited a karaoke lounge last week among the newly infected, a cluster health authorities described as a “small outbreak”.

Speaking ahead of the weekly Executive Council meeting of her senior advisers, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said the government was weighing alternative measures to cope with the outbreak and might send recovering patients to quarantine facilities.

It was “not satisfactory” that some people confirmed to have the virus were still to be sent to hospital, she said, among them a person who had waited at least four days. According to the Hospital Authority, 12 confirmed infected people were still waiting for admission as of 3pm.

“We do not rule out that the authority may transfer recovering patients to other sorts of quarantine centres, with one possibility being the current quarantine centres under the Centre for Health Protection,” Lam said.