Coronavirus: Hong Kong private hospitals risk system collapse if they take in Covid-19 patients, sector leader says, countering expert’s appeal
- Private sector response follows appeal for help from University of Hong Kong’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung as he compares public facilities to ‘battlefields’
- Chairman of private hospital group says ‘finger-pointing’ will not help, cites fears of losing staff to coronavirus infection risks
Dr William Ho Shiu-wei, chairman of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association, was responding to an appeal from the University of Hong Kong’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, a top infectious diseases expert, who urged private hospitals to do more as public facilities were looking like “battlefields”.
Public hospitals have been inundated with Covid-19 patients for weeks, leading to congested wards, crowded corridors and even beds placed outdoors at some facilities.
Yuen had said in an earlier message to the media that it would be “morally wrong” to turn away Covid-19-positive patients from private hospitals and refer them to public facilities, when the latter were “flooded like a battlefield situation”.
He added that the quarantine policy for health care workers at private hospitals should be the same as public facilities, where staff who come into contact with Covid-19 patients in a clinical setting do not need to undergo isolation because they are equipped with protective gear.
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Yuen said this would allow private hospitals to take in people with mild symptoms under outpatient and inpatient services, just like at public facilities.