People hang in at home during hospital bed wait

Fashion designer William Tang Tat-chi is among more than 100 people who have tested positive but have been waiting for days to go into hospital.

For public hospitals are severely challenged by a recent surge of virus patients.

The Hospital Authority's chief manager for clinical effectiveness and technology management, Linda Yu Wai-ling, said yesterday that 1,207 isolation beds were opened in 649 wards. And 930 beds in 535 wards were occupied.

Tang had been waiting to be assigned a bed after showing up positive in a preliminary test on Friday.

The authority told Tang to wait for arrangements to be finalized at around 10pm that day, but he had still to get word by yesterday evening.

In the meantime he has been self-quarantining alone in his home in the New Territories and was in stable condition.

Tang said his domestic helper - staying at his second home - had been dropping off daily necessities outside his door.

"My current condition is that I don't have any obvious symptoms, so I'm fine with quarantine at home," Tang said when asked if he preferred to be at home or in a medical facility.

He added: "I might not be able to get used to a quarantine camp or a hospital."

Yu said it was not desirable to keep patients waiting, "but we hope they can understand we are facing big pressure on hospital beds".

Over 200 patients had been moved to second-tier wards, she said. And 72 stable patients had gone to community isolation facilities Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village to keep first-tier beds for newly diagnosed patients.

Second-tier wards have been adapted from regular wards with the installing of negative-pressure isolation facilities.

On waiting patients calling for ambulances, Yu said it would be difficult for a control center to allocate people to hospitals.

Meanwhile, Sha Tin district councillor Yau Man-chun urged the Housing Society to deliver meals and provide home epidemic prevention information for people waiting to be admitted to hospitals.

This came after he had helped a confirmed female virus patient in Sha Tin Wai to call an ambulance on Saturday night when she started having breathing difficulties.

Yau wrote on Facebook on Saturday that the 38-year-old woman had been confirmed to be positive on Wednesday, and her three family members had been waiting for two days to go to quarantine facilities.

Yau received a phone call from the woman asking for help at 11pm Saturday. She had been considering calling an ambulance but was worried a call would cause a problem for the ambulance service.

Around midnight, Yau said, "after discussing with several council members we decided to call the ambulance for the patient."

He also told the manager of the Jat Ming Chuen public housing estate in Sha Tin about the case "and told the Housing Society to sanitize and clean the building that she resides in immediately."