Coronavirus: team of mainland traditional Chinese medicine specialists to advise Hong Kong on Covid treatments, infection control in elderly care homes
- Chief Executive Carrie Lam and local health officials received the team of seven specialists at the Shenzhen Bay border point on Tuesday morning
- Lam says the government hopes the experts can help authorities better apply traditional medicine in treating Covid-19 patients and speeding up their recovery
A team of traditional Chinese medicine experts arrived in Hong Kong from the mainland on Tuesday to advise the government on how to strengthen infection control in care homes for the elderly and better treat Covid-19 patients.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and local health officials received the team of seven specialists – the fourth batch of medical experts dispatched from the mainland since the city’s fifth wave of coronavirus infections began – at the Shenzhen Bay border point on Tuesday morning.
Among the officials there were health minister Sophia Chan Siu-chee, Director of Health Dr Ronald Lam Man-kin, as well as Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling and chief executive Dr Tony Ko Pat-sing.
Lam said the government hoped the experts could help authorities better apply traditional Chinese medicine in treating Covid-19 patients and speeding up their recovery and rehabilitation, adding that the methods had been proved effective based on the mainland’s experience.
Noting that many elderly people, including those living in residential care homes, had been infected in the fifth wave, Lam said the experts would visit those facilities to see what could be done better.
“I have asked for an arrangement for them … to observe the environment of those care homes, [determine] what more can be done to prevent infections, [and] if infections take place, how traditional Chinese medicine can be used for treatment as soon as possible,” she said.
A total of 784 homes for the elderly and 285 care centres for the disabled have reported outbreaks amid the fifth wave, with about 56 per cent of coronavirus-related deaths occurring among residents of these facilities.
Lam added that the mainland experts would also work with Covid-19 patients at the community treatment facility at AsiaWorld-Expo. About 20 traditional Chinese medicine practitioners are already working at the facility on Lantau as part of an earlier contingent of some 300 healthcare workers sent there from the mainland.