The Hospital Authority today called on healthcare staff to stay on duty and join hands to cope with the challenge of the service surge and worsening situation of the novel coronavirus.

Responding to the strike advocated by some staff members, the authority said it shares the same goal as its staff to safeguard the health of Hong Kong people.

It called on staff not to join the strike and to seek consensus through discussions, and reiterated that the strike would not be in the interest of patients and would affect public hospital services.

The authority convened the Central Command Committee to review the services and manpower situation in various hospital clusters.

It said that all hospital clusters need to significantly adjust services to focus their manpower to maintain emergency and essential services.

All hospital clusters will reduce elective surgeries and some outpatient services by about 50%.

Additionally, all specialist outpatient clinic services will be affected, while drug refill services will be arranged for follow-up patients.

General outpatient clinics will try to remain open by rearranging duty rosters and hiring part-time staff. For follow-up appointments for patients with chronic diseases, drug refill services will be arranged and consultations will be rescheduled.

Hospitals would also reduce physiotherapy and occupational therapy outpatient services by about 50%. Outpatients will be informed of their rescheduled appointment dates.

The Major Incident Control Centres of the authority’s Head Office and hospital clusters will be activated on February 3 to monitor the service situation closely.

The authority also thanked staff members who remained on duty to cope with the additional duties being deployed to them due to the strike.