Hospital Authority Chairman Henry Fan Hungling talks to China Daily on Monday. (CALVIN NG / CHINA DAILY)
Hospital Authority (HA) Chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling said he was grateful to the central government for allocating much-needed personal protective equipment (PPE) to Hong Kong, when the city faced a particularly difficult time fighting COVID-19 in early February.
Public hospitals in Hong Kong were facing a shortage in PPE in early February, while there was a five-day strike by some of the health workers.
“The supply is now stable and good for nearly three months despite the fact COVID-19 was very rampant on the mainland at the time. … We were able to secure a continuing PPE supply from the Chinese mainland, even during this difficult period, for which we are very thankful,” he said.
The new HA head also expressed gratitude to front-line medical workers and HA staff who worked extremely hard in fighting the virus
The new HA head also expressed gratitude to front-line medical workers and HA staff who worked extremely hard in fighting the virus.
To convey his gratitude, Fan has initiated an allowance of HK$500 (US$64.50) for healthcare workers to stay in hotels after they work in isolation wards for long hours. They have been staying away from home out of fear of infecting family members. The HA also reached an agreement with New World Development to allow free stays for healthcare workers at one of its hotels in Kowloon.
To boost morale, Fan revealed, there is another special allowance for these workers, calculated at 20 percent of their base salary.
It is not lower than HK$500 but has no upper limit. This will benefit lower-paid staff, he said, because all staff members face the same risks but receive different wages. Hong Kong has reported no infections among healthcare workers.
‘Knock on the Wrong Door’
While grateful for those fighting COVID-19, Fan also condemned several thousand Hospital Authority healthcare employees who were “absent from duty” as part of a strike from Feb 3 to 7.
They demanded a shutdown of all immigration checkpoints to stop people coming from the mainland to curb the spread of the virus.
Their demands were neither reasonable nor logical, Fan said, as latest figures show that most confirmed cases in Hong Kong are imported from Europe and the United States, not the Chinese mainland.
Nearly 70 percent of Hong Kong’s 1,037 confirmed cases have been imported or close contacts of patients. Imported cases rose to 90 percent of all cases between April 9 and 22.
The United Kingdom was the biggest contributor with 402 cases (49.33 percent of the imported cases), followed by the US with 84 cases, and France with 46 cases.
Only 19 cases originated from the Chinese mainland, behind Switzerland (36), Canada (33), Spain (26) and Japan (21), according to statistics provided by the Centre for Health Protection.
It is an ironclad fact that most confirmed cases were imported from the UK and the US, and there were not many from the Chinese mainland, he said. “It was a wrong demand without a solid argument, whether or not it was politically motivated. That is why the government rejected it.”
In fact, the central government took a very decisive step to lock down Hubei province and the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected, to stop it from spreading.
“The Hong Kong government has twice chartered flights to bring its residents back from Wuhan. Only one from the initial batch was found to be infected and sent to an isolation ward. For the second batch, the returning people were quarantined at home without going to hospitals.”
The “absent” healthcare workers had ‘‘knocked on the wrong door’’ when pressuring the HA to close the borders, Fan said, as the HA is a statutory body that runs public hospitals, not immigration checkpoints.
