A couple of days ago, we published a post about Hong Kong, asking why its hospitals are under such pressure when the city is currently reporting extremely low infection and death rates. A reader and Hong Kong resident has provided the explanation.
Just caught up with your Daily Sceptic item on Hong Kong.
The reason it looks horrendous – patients on trolleys outside hospital etc. – is because of Hong Kong’s official “Dynamic Covid Policy”. This involves anyone testing positive being immediately sent to hospital despite the authorities acknowledging that 90% are either asymptomatic or not really sick. Compulsory hospital stays are then 21 days irrespective of severity.
When Hong Kong had few positive test cases, there were enough hospital beds. The recent relatively large surge in people testing positive (as opposed to being very sick) has simply overwhelmed hospitals with people who do not need to be there.
The first fallback was to send positive persons to the designated Government quarantine facilities. These soon filled up, like the hospitals. Today, 4,000 hotel rooms have been allocated with a further up to 40,000 hotel rooms in preparation. There is a large waiting list for these rooms with positive test people told to stay at home and wait for further instructions. From today we have 300 official Covid licensed taxis that you call to take you to your quarantine facility. They were fully booked within 10 minutes!
The good news – if you are actually sick – is that there will therefore now be a hospital bed. If you are not sick, but test positive, you can look forward to an enforced stay in a hotel room at taxpayers expense with no windows that open and only allowed to open the door to take in food left on the floor outside or to take a test in the doorway.
It’s really great to live in such a “dynamic” and safe place as Hong Kong.
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