Health staff urged to return to work

February 4, 2020

Chief Executive Carrie Lam: Now as far as the strike that has taken place in the public hospitals under the Hospital Authority, I am just laying out the implications and the consequences according to a report by the Hospital Authority. The consequences yesterday were quite serious. Important services and critical operations had been affected - whether it's in the neonatal ICUs, in the isolation wards or patients awaiting certain cancer treatments, all these had been affected. So, I’m appealing to those who are taking part in this action that let’s put the interests of the patients and the entire public health system above all other things. But having said that, there is actually a high degree of consistency between what they are asking for and what the Government is doing. It’s all pointing to, as you have rightly described, minimising the people flow. All the measures that we have adopted in the last 10 days or so are focusing on this one single objective: we want to minimise and reduce very significantly the cross-border passenger traffic so as to reduce the chances of infection. And we will continue to do that.

(To watch the video with sign language interpretation, click here.)

Chief Executive Carrie Lam today called on healthcare workers participating in a strike to return to work.

Speaking to the media ahead of the Executive Council meeting this morning, Mrs Lam noted that services in public hospitals had been affected due to the absence of some healthcare workers on February 3.

“The consequences yesterday were quite serious. Important services and critical operations had been affected - whether it's in the neonatal ICUs, in the isolation wards or patients awaiting certain cancer treatments, all these had been affected.

“So, I’m appealing to those who are taking part in this action that let’s put the interests of the patients and the entire public health system above all other things.”

She added that the Government’s measures on reducing cross-boundary people flow are consistent with the requests of healthcare workers.

“There is actually a high degree of consistency between what they are asking for and what the Government is doing. It’s all pointing to minimising the people flow.

“All the measures that we have adopted in the last 10 days or so are focusing on this one single objective: we want to minimise and reduce very significantly the cross-border passenger traffic so as to reduce the chances of infection. And we will continue to do that.”