“Like how [Carrie] Lam met with the hotel sector to enlist support for the provision of quarantine rooms, now it’s the private hospitals’ turn,” the source said, referring to the city leader’s high-level meeting with hotel owners in mid-February in which she expressed hope that at least 10,000 rooms could be made available for isolation purposes.

On Monday, Hong Kong logged 25,150 new infections with a new high of 161 deaths. A much-delayed government platform for Covid-19 patients to declare their positive rapid antigen tests went live at 6pm, with more than 100,000 people joining the online queue within an hour of its launch, although by 11pm the line had cleared.

With mainland experts over the weekend weighing in on the timing of a coming mass testing drive, a source from across the border said on Monday Beijing had no “hard and fast” rule on when and how the exercise should be conducted.

Transport minister Frank Chan Fan also said public transport would be maintained during the screening drive, and at least one person in each household would be allowed to go out to buy daily necessities.

‘No public transport shutdown’ for Hong Kong Covid-19 mass testing

Separately, Beijing officials at the country’s annual parliamentary sessions had in their sights Hong Kong’s private hospitals for a second day, chastising the sector for shunning Covid-19 patients when public health facilities had been overwhelmed.

Vice-Premier Han Zheng, who heads the Communist Party’s leading group on Hong Kong and Macau affairs, was quoted as saying in a meeting with 17 of Hong Kong’s deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Monday that the city must work on weaknesses in its fight against the coronavirus.

“The vice-premier said he noticed news reports about some private hospitals being reluctant to take Covid-19 patients. He said he hoped that was ‘fake news’,” said NPC delegate Chan Yung, spokesman for the Hong Kong delegation.

But lawmakers and analysts have also said authorities did not make any serious effort earlier to tap the resources of private hospitals, only piling pressure on the sector now.

Han called on local authorities to take “strong and decisive measures” to reduce the death rate and prioritise care for the elderly.

During his meeting with the Hong Kong delegates, Han revealed that Beijing had approved a plan to resume cross-border travel between the city and mainland China from January 9, but it was derailed by the growing number of cases locally.

Hours after the high-level talks in Beijing, CUHK Medical Centre, a private teaching hospital owned by Chinese University and located in Ma Liu Shui, announced that an isolation ward of 24 beds, or a fifth of its total, had been converted to admit Covid-19 patients referred from public hospitals, marking the city’s first and only private facility to do so.

The Post understands that the facility, formerly a geriatrics ward, will be for recovering patients and those with mild symptoms from public hospitals in the New Territories East cluster. Four patients have been referred so far.

Thousands flood Hong Kong Covid results platform; city logs 25,150 new cases

All private hospitals had made clear in their policies that walk-in Covid patients were not accepted into their wards. A Post check revealed at least three did not offer outpatient treatment for such patients or their close contacts, as well as for people with respiratory conditions but that were not coronavirus-related.

They were Evangel Hospital, St Teresa’s Hospital and Precious Blood Hospital.

“We will ask you to leave if you have a cough or fever. Please don’t waste your time and money … We hope you understand we have to protect our doctors and patients,” a staff member at Evangel Hospital in Kowloon City told a Post reporter inquiring as a potential patient on Monday.

CUHK Medical Care, Baptist Hospital, Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong and St Paul’s Hospital pledged to provide outpatient treatment to Covid-19 patients, while telemedicine was the only option for Canossa Hospital and Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital.

At least five hospitals required recovered patients who tested negative to wait for six to 14 days before allowing them to enter the premises, the Post found.

A spokesman for Canossa disclosed that only half the hospital’s beds were occupied. But it could not admit Covid-19 patients due to manpower shortage, and it had only one negative pressure room.

A spokeswoman for Matilda International Hospital said it did not have negative pressure rooms and had no access to treatment drugs, therefore it focused on increasing the intake of patients requiring urgent surgery for cancer.

“The hospital is now studying the possibility of developing a ward area with a unidirectional airflow system,” she said.

A Baptist Hospital spokeswoman said about nine out of 10 of its isolation rooms were occupied by Covid-19 patients diagnosed as having caught the virus after admission, adding that they were now converting six single rooms to accommodate more cases.

The Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital said two isolation wards had been designated for patients diagnosed with the virus after admission. Telemedicine consultations would be arranged for other positive cases at a targeted area in the hospital.

A spokeswoman for Hong Kong Adventist Hospital on Stubbs Road said it had acted in accordance with the authorities’ guideline to advise Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms to visit the government’s designated clinics.

Dr William Ho Shiu-wei, chairman of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association, told a radio programme some individuals might have misunderstandings about private hospitals, and this might have been passed on to the city’s leader.

He pointed out that the authorities had never requested private hospitals to admit Covid-19 patients, adding that the sector had already conducted a few hundred surgeries, computerised tomography (CT) scans, and magnetic resonance imaging scans on patients referred from public hospitals.

Hong Kong, meanwhile, has recorded about 2,000 deaths since the fifth Covid-19 wave broke out in late December. Of the first 1,800 deaths, 69 per cent were aged 80 and above.

Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of semi-official think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said reducing the mortality rate among the city’s elderly was also a new challenge for mainland experts advising the city on its struggle, as it was never a worry across the border.

While 90 per cent of all eligible Hongkongers have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, that figure drops to just 52 per cent for those aged 80 and up.

NPC deputy Herman Hu Shao-ming said the government should send more outreach teams to vaccinate both elderly residents who lived in care homes and those who did not.

Additional reporting by Gigi Choy and Rachel Yeo