China medics arrive to help treat elderly

The first batch of 75 medical workers from the mainland - 36 doctors and 39 nurses - has arrived in Hong Kong.

They also include experts of infection control, respiratory and cardiology, from 14 public hospitals in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan and Zhuhai.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said yesterday another batch of 300 mainland health workers will arrive later this week to help treat Covid patients.

Lam said the central government has assigned mainland medical teams to support the local health system after around 16 mainland experts visited Hong Kong last week.

The medical workers are exempted from obtaining licenses to practice in Hong Kong under an emergency regulation introduced at the end of last month.

"More medical workers will arrive in batches in the future so as to enhance the treatment capacity at facilities under the Hospital Authority," Lam said, but did not provide further details.

Hospital Authority chief executive Tony Ko Pat-sing said the first batch will mainly be deployed to the Asia-World Expo community treatment facility, where they will be treating elderly patients.

Ko dismissed concerns about the language barrier, adding that mainland and Hong Kong workers work similarly.

He said the Hospital Authority has included Chinese input in the clinical system, given that Hong Kong health workers usually use English for the input of medical records as opposed to Chinese by mainland workers.

"The two teams are actually very fluent in the application of both languages so there should not be any problem, but certainly we will be careful," he said.

Ko added that the number of designated Covid clinics will increase from 17 to 23, with quotas raised from 3,000 to 4,000, half of them reserved for elderly patients. An additional hotline will be set up by for high-risk groups to make reservations.

He said half of the 22,000 public hospital beds have been used to take Covid patients, while the number of patients in A&E rooms at Queen Elizabeth Hospital - which was turned into a designated Covid hospital last week - has been maintained at 360 to 370, similar to previous levels.

But he said the peak of A&E patients in other hospitals remained around 800 people, which is still not ideal.

Meanwhile, the private Union Hospital in Tai Wai will reserve another 80 beds to take in non-Covid patients transferred by public hospitals.

The hospital's spokesman said the beds reserved for non-Covid patients make up around 20 percent of all beds in the hospital and more patients from public hospitals will be admitted in the coming weeks.

carine.chow@singtaonewscorp.com