Medical support team arrives

March 14, 2022

Under Secretary for Food & Health Dr Chui Tak-yi:
With the current directive of reducing severe cases and also fatality cases, we have to stratify our care - sending the more severe cases to the hospitals for care and the less severe ones to the community treatment facilities. 

There is also a bottleneck in manpower because of the large number of positive cases.

With the help of the medical support team from the Mainland, I think they will work and collaborate very closely with the medical teams (of) the Hospital Authority. The focus of their work is in providing care at the AsiaWorld-Expo (community treatment facility). I think with their support, we will be able to increase the scope and the scale of the services and provide more timely care for the patients there. 

There are altogether 75 members. 

Hospital Authority Chairman Henry Fan:
The Hospital Authority has today a total (of) over 12,000 COVID-19 in-patients and this has caused a great burden on our workforce.

In addition, about 15,000 of our 90,000-strong workforce (are) confirmed (COVID-19) positive. Therefore, this has cost us to lose about 10% of our workforce, although 7,000 of them have already returned to work. 

For this reason, we have not been able to open up fully all the beds at AsiaWorld-Expo (community treatment facility).

With the help of this medical team, hopefully we will now be able to do so. 

This team has got very valuable experience in the treatment of COVID-19 and the Hospital Authority hopes to benefit from their wisdom and learn from them.

Members of the Mainland medical support team arrived in Hong Kong today to provide assistance in treating COVID-19 patients in the city, the Government said.

Welcoming the 75 Mainland personnel comprising healthcare professionals from different disciplines, Under Secretary for Food & Health Dr Chui Tak-yi said: “I think they will work and collaborate very closely with the medical teams (of) the Hospital Authority. The focus of their work is in providing care at the AsiaWorld-Expo (community treatment facility). I think with their support, we will be able to increase the scope and the scale of the services and provide more timely care for the patients there.”

With the medical team’s assistance at the AsiaWorld-Expo treatment facility, the Government expects that the overall patient flow will speed up, allowing the Hospital Authority to concentrate its manpower on handling patients with more serious clinical conditions in public hospitals.

Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan said in a press statement: “I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the central government and the Guangdong Provincial Government for recruiting experienced Mainland healthcare workers to come to Hong Kong within a short period of time and assist us in fighting the epidemic. It is a great boost for our anti-epidemic efforts.”

Noting that Hong Kong is now focusing its medical resources on reducing the number of severe cases and deaths, Prof Chan added that the country’s healthcare team could help more patients receive timely and appropriate treatment.

Other members of the support team will arrive in Hong Kong progressively, the Government added.