As part of ramping up the campaign to get most of the population inoculated against Covid-19, children as young as three will be allowed to take the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine from Tuesday.

The city’s public health care system is said to be on the brink of collapse, with the occupancy rate of isolation beds pushed to its upper limit of 90 per cent, thousands of Covid-19 patients still waiting in the community for admission, and more health care workers getting infected.

On the city’s testing capacity, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch of the Centre for Health Protection, said the health department’s laboratory was overwhelmed, and about 1,000 preliminary-positive cases from Sunday had yet to be confirmed.

“We started to fall behind in confirming cases from Sunday. Because of the vast amount of specimens and tests being done, there is some delay in the confirmation,” Chuang said.

“At this point we still need the public health laboratory to confirm the tests but we will monitor the situation and review the practice from time to time.”

All preliminary-positive cases would also be handled as confirmed and arrangements made for isolation or hospital admission, she said.

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A large-scale temporary lab in Ma On Shan, run by the mainland China-backed Sunrise Diagnostics, will begin operation on Tuesday in a bid to raise the city’s daily capacity to 300,000 tests.

In a further reflection of the worsening situation, more outbreaks were reported in seven care homes for the elderly and disabled in Sham Shui Po, Tuen Mun, Prince Edward, To Kwa Wan and Sha Tin, while two residents who tested preliminary-positive died before they could be admitted to hospital.

Two more elderly patients who tested positive for the virus also died, taking the total number of Covid-19-related fatalities to 225.

Nineteen of the latest cases reported on Monday were imported, all from a flight from Indonesia on Sunday, while the remaining 2,052 were locally transmitted.

Thirty-two infections were suspected to involve the potentially more lethal Delta variant, and 1,957 were believed to be Omicron cases, while the remaining were pending genome sequencing.

The city’s overall tally of confirmed cases stood at 25,051.

The Hospital Authority said more than 3,600 patients, including preliminary-positive cases, were being treated in various public health care facilities.

“The occupancy rate of isolation beds at public hospitals has already reached nearly 90 per cent, which is the upper limit we can take,” said Dr Sara Ho Yuen-ha, a chief manager at the authority.

“We cannot let the occupancy rate of our isolation beds reach 100 per cent, as we must reserve some spaces … for disinfection or urgent patients.”

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She said a hotline would be set up to support Covid-19 patients who were still waiting to be admitted to health care facilities, while designated clinics would also be set up for them.

The Post estimates about 10,900 Covid-19 patients – including Monday’s 4,500 preliminary-positive cases – are waiting to be admitted to public health care facilities. Of around 25,000 confirmed cases, 3,600 are currently in hospital while 14,800 have been discharged, a difference of 6,400, factoring in 225 related deaths.

A total of 4,730 people who were deemed close contacts of patients were in quarantine in 2,115 homes, according to authorities.

The conditions of 10 patients, including preliminary cases, were reported as critical, including a three-year-old girl with no underlying medical conditions. Seven of them were unvaccinated.

Another 40 Hospital Authority staff tested positive for the coronavirus, while 28 were identified as close contacts. More than 280 public hospital staff, including doctors, nurses, patient care assistants and administrative workers, have been infected in the current wave.

Mainland authorities have promised to help build another makeshift hospital in Hong Kong to ease the pressure, but details are still under discussion between the city’s administration and its counterparts across the border.

While 7,100 beds were designated for Covid-19 patients in the city’s public health care system, pooled from hospitals and isolation facilities at AsiaWorld-Expo and the Penny’s Bay quarantine camp, experts said setting further priorities for their allocation was needed.

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Government pandemic adviser Professor David Hui Shu-cheong said authorities should prioritise admitting young children, particularly those aged five and below, as well as the elderly, while patients with mild or no symptoms should stay at home.

“Home isolation is not ideal because most people do not have separate toilets in their homes, so it is easy to infect other family members,” he said. “But because hospital beds are so tight, it really depends on how many more units authorities can open up in Penny’s Bay, AsiaWorld-Expo and hotels.”

Officials could also consider using vacant public housing estates, he said.

University of Hong Kong microbiologist Dr Ho Pak-leung said high-risk patients, including children aged under five, should be admitted to hospital as soon as possible.

Since January 31, about 520 out of 8,900 patients admitted to hospital for Covid-19 were children aged six or younger, authorities said.

Additional reporting by Nadia Lam