Hong Kong, Feb. 28 (BNA): Hospital mortuary facilities and public mortuaries in Hong Kong are struggling to keep up with a record number of COVID-19 infections and deaths, bypassing the authorities’ attempts to control the outbreak.
Tony Ling, president of the city’s general physicians union, said dozens of bodies were waiting in accident and emergency rooms in hospitals across the global financial center to be moved to mortuaries.
“These bodies now need more time to wait for their collection because the resources are very scarce” due to the shortage of manpower and storage capacity, he said.
The government and the Hospital Authority did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
There have been more than 600 coronavirus-related deaths in Hong Kong since the start of the epidemic in 2020, fewer than other similar major cities.
However, the numbers are climbing daily with 83 deaths recorded on Sunday. About 300 deaths have been recorded in the past week, most of them from unvaccinated residents.
Hong Kong has a large proportion of the elderly who are not vaccinated despite the recent increase in vaccinations. Many have hesitated to vaccinate for fear of side effects and complacency due to the city’s success in controlling the virus in 2021.
Medical experts said the city of 7.4 million could see its cumulative death toll from the virus rise to about 3,206 by mid-May.
According to government figures for 2020, an average of 4,000 people die every month in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has stuck firmly to a policy of “dynamic zero” of the coronavirus that seeks to curb all outbreaks, like that in mainland China. To achieve this, the former British colony unleashed its most draconian measures since the start of the pandemic, adding to rules that were already among the toughest in the world.
The city has recorded more than 171,000 infections in total, of which about 160,000 have been reported since the beginning of February due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.
The government in recent days has told the public at press conferences that the deaths have mostly been among unvaccinated people. Previously, this information was not easily provided.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said mainland Chinese experts have suggested her administration to “more clearly explain the clinical situation of deaths to the public and to promote vaccination among the elderly,” according to a government statement issued Sunday night.
Chinese officials stepped in to bolster Hong Kong’s efforts to combat the outbreak after Chinese President Xi Jinping asked the city government to make it its “primary mission” to control the worsening COVID-19 outbreak.
MI