Govt task force to help care homes tackle Covid

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong said on Saturday that the government would set up an inter-departmental task force to help care homes deal with the pandemic, as he admitted to shortcomings in tackling the fifth Covid wave.

Speaking at the government’s daily Covid briefing, he said the task force – which he will head -will meet next week, and its first task will be to improve the ventilation of care homes and relevant anti-epidemic guidelines.

The latest outbreak has hit care homes for the elderly and the disabled hard, with almost 3,700 residents having died after contracting Covid.

“With the rapid change of the epidemic, we could not catch up. So with this heavy lesson learnt, we hope to do better, in terms of infection control. With the isolation centres, as well as the holding centres in place, we hope we won’t see what happened in the past month or so …happen again,” Law said.

The minister also said some 630 mainland care workers, on three-month contracts, are now in Hong Kong, and more than half have already started working in holding facilities to look after elderly Covid patients.

Authorities have hired around 100 carers locally as well, he added.

Earlier, the government eased requirements for the import of workers under the Supplementary Labour Scheme for three months, under which care homes will be exempted from launching a four-week local recruitment before deciding to bring in people from elsewhere.

The secretary said officials have received almost 400 applications, and approved a vast majority of them, involving 1,764 hires.

Meanwhile, Law said the government is considering allocating a number of quarantine facilities to house close contacts of infected care home residents, as more community isolation sites and holding centres have come into operation, along with an increase in the number of temporary carers in the city.