Photos of medical tourists from mainland China flooding into private Hong Kong hospital go viral and spark debate over whether health services can cope

Hundreds of visitors queued for hours to get HPV vaccines at an elite private hospital in Hong Kong on Saturday, prompting a heated debate among locals as to how medical services would cope as the city was further integrated into the “Greater Bay Area”.

Photos of the large crowd in the lobby of the Hong Kong Sanatorium & Hospital, in Happy Valley, went viral, with many online users noting the number of people carrying luggage.

Other photos were posted on Weibo, the mainland Chinese version of Twitter, by mainland residents in the queue.

One Weibo user wrote in a post that she had waited for five hours, and the numbers given to her and her three friends were 311 to 314. Another Weibo user said she decided to leave because the queue in front of her extended for some 600 metres.

A spokesman for the hospital said people were receiving the second and third injections of their human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination, Gardasil-9. The drug is designed to immunise recipients against the virus, which increases the risk of cervical cancer.

Special time slots this weekend for those who had their first jab last year had previously been arranged by the hospital.

“The increase in patients coming to the hospital is likely because of the end of the Lunar New Year holiday,” the spokesman said, adding the hospital had organised extra staff to handle the injections, and to manage the crowd to ensure it could provide services as normal.

The cost of being vaccinated at the private hospital is HK$6,195 per person, while a consultation fee of between HK$320 and HK$560 is also payable, according to the hospital’s official website.

“The consultation fee may be adjusted if you would like to have vaccination outside the [regular] hours,” the hospital states on its website.

Shortage of anti-cancer drug prompts Hong Kong protest

A vaccination service is regularly provided between 9am and 1pm on Saturdays, but is not normally available on Sunday.

Trips to Hong Kong for the drug have become increasingly popular in recent years across the border, as awareness surrounding cervical health has improved. But the vaccine, which has been available in Hong Kong since 2016, was not approved by national regulators until last April.

That same month, the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong said it would stop providing HPV vaccines to non-Hong Kong residents because of limited resources. The Department of Health said it had received several queries from the public about the shortage of the drug.

The photos posted online on Saturday drew mocking comments asking if the hospital had become a new tourism spot for visitors from the Greater Bay Area.

HPV vaccine approval delay on mainland forces women to seek shots in city

Under a long-awaited blueprint rolled out by the central government last week, the Greater Bay Area – comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in the neighbouring Guangdong province – will be developed into an innovation and technology hub, as well as a world-class urban cluster by 2035.

The plan calls for more connectivity between the cities over a range of sectors, including infrastructure and public services.

Facebook user PW WA summed up the fears of many, writing in a comment: “Resources that Hong Kong has accumulated over the past century will be offered up to other cities in the Greater Bay Area.”

The criticism has been compound by the dissatisfaction among local residents over the strain the city’s public health service has been under during the winter flu season, which has still not officially ended.

“They must have heard that the public hospitals are too busy to serve them, so they went to a private hospital,” wrote Facebook user CarJun ChungChan.

Another user, Eunice Chan, added: “Good choice. Please don’t come to where the poor people go, including Tseung Kwan O.”