Coronavirus: Hong Kong confirms record 1,325 cases, while 4-year-old boy who died among suspected infections
- Boy dies after passing out at his home in Yuen Long and is being treated as a preliminary-positive case, hospital says
- Confirming an earlier Post report, Hospital Authority chief manager says officials are identifying hotels to isolate patients with mild symptoms
Authorities were also following a suspected case involving a four-year-old boy who died after he vomited and passed out at his home in Yuen Long soon after 3am on Friday. Pok Oi Hospital, where the boy was certified dead, said he tested preliminary-positive for Covid-19 and the case would be passed to the Coroner’s Court. A police source said the boy had a fever on Wednesday and was given medication for it.
Two coronavirus-related deaths were also reported, an 88-year-old woman and an 86-year-old man, pushing the city’s overall toll to 218 fatalities.
Two elderly unvaccinated patients – aged 84 and 97 – were critically ill, while 11 people were in a serious condition, with more than half of them not inoculated.
The latest confirmed cases, just two of which were imported, pushed the overall infection tally since the start of the pandemic to 20,119.
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Hong Kong prepares for tightest restrictions yet as Covid-19 cases top 1,100
Dr Larry Lee Lap-yip, a chief manager of the Hospital Authority, said it was “very concerned” about the latest outbreaks in hospitals. He said the authority would arrange rapid antigen tests for all staff “step by step”.
“All staff should watch their health and that of their family very carefully, and should not show up for work if they have any mild symptoms,” he said.
“We advise them to wear two masks when going to or leaving work, it could be one cloth mask outside the surgical mask.”
Sources revealed that daily rapid tests for authority staff would be required from early next week, adding the requirement would later be extended to care home workers.
Two public hospitals in Sha Tin and Tuen Mun were found to have outbreaks involving six and three patients, respectively. A total of five elderly patients in two cubicles and seven workers at Caritas Medical Centre in Sham Shui Po were found to be infected.
More than 40 authority staff were preliminary-positive, while about 10 patients tested positive upon admission.
Confirming an earlier Post report, Lee said the authorities were identifying hotels to isolate patients with mild symptoms, with hospital beds nearing capacity soon. Home isolation would be the last resort.
Authorities were “on the way” to using the second phase of the Penny’s Bay camp, which had 1,200 rooms ready with more to come, Lee said, and were actively preparing to use other phases of the facility, as well as additional halls at AsiaWorld-Expo.
Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection warned the surge in cases had strained health care facilities.
“The number of cases in Hong Kong is still increasing. We have more than 1,500 preliminary-positive cases so that means there are still a lot of cases in the community and lots of transmission in the community,” she said.
“It has stretched our health care facilities in every aspect but I understand we are trying our best to streamline the process.”
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A total of 2,387 people were in isolation in 1,043 homes as of Thursday evening.
Meanwhile, authorities announced that flights from Nepal would be banned from Saturday until March 4.
The South Asian nation joins eight other countries – Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States – on the blacklist. The flight ban on those countries was extended by two weeks until March 4.
Health officials detected Covid-19 infections in at least seven more centres for the elderly on Friday, with about 40 residents having to be evacuated from Fai To Home for the Aged (On Lai) Branch after two tested preliminary-positive. Several more tested positive on rapid antigen tests.
About 30 care homes have recorded infections since the fifth wave of infections began.
Professor Lau Yu-lung, who chairs the government’s scientific committee on vaccine preventable diseases, said the vaccination rate had to get to at least 90 per cent in the coming three weeks to curb the current wave.
Residents who had already received two jabs, he added, should be allowed to get their third just three months after their last one, as opposed to six.
He suggested the government set up mobile vaccination stations at care homes with positive cases and residential buildings where lockdowns had been imposed, among other places.
“The government should send outreach vaccination teams to primary schools as soon as possible … Even if there are only 50 students who wish to be vaccinated, they should still send a team,” Lau said.
He also proposed vastly expanding the operating hours of vaccination centres, saying they should be open from 6am to midnight, rather than 8am to 8pm, as is currently the case.
The number of people getting their first shot has spiked along with daily caseloads. Some 22,900 people received their first jab on February 7 – the same day the city confirmed more than 600 new cases – up from just 10,023 the day before. On Thursday, the number of first-time vaccine recipients hit 37,496.
Lau went on to say that the government should begin locking down buildings and neighbourhoods for at least five days as soon as their sewage samples tested positive for the virus, or two or three positive cases were found there.
“If all the hospitals have reached their capacity, asymptomatic patients can all stay in their own buildings unless those buildings have an extremely high risk of transmissions,” he said.
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“If we reach the point where home quarantine is required for coronavirus patients, those who are young and without serious symptoms should be fine. For kids, paediatricians can diagnose them and monitor their daily situation remotely.”
Private medical practitioners and medical students, as well as officers from the Shenzhen government, should be allowed to administer shots at vaccination centres to ramp up capacity, Lau suggested.
But Samuel Kwok Po-yin, medical director of the vaccination centre at Kwun Tong Sports Centre, said only registered nurses should be permitted to administer injections to prevent mistakes.
He said the number of vaccines administered each day at his centre was 20 per cent higher than its designated capacity, suggesting that cutting the rest time after receiving the Sinovac vaccine to 15 minutes could add 1,000 more jabs per day.
Those who receive Sinovac are asked to wait for 30 minutes of observation afterwards, while those who get BioNTech must wait 15 minutes.
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He acknowledged, however, that staff recruitment for the centre had hit a “bottleneck”.
“We may need to recruit retired medical officers. We need some time to arrange that,” he said.
“Opening more vaccination centres may be another way [to boost capacity]. The government may need one to two weeks to prepare such things as finding a venue and recruiting a team,” he said.
Meanwhile, Cinema giant Broadway Circuit announced its branch at Plaza Hollywood in Diamond Hill would close in March, citing the end of its contract and the closure forced by the pandemic.
Separately, Sino Group, Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong announced a joint effort to donate 280,000 rapid antigen test kits to the underprivileged next week.
