Hundreds of mainland health workers coming to HK: CE

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said hundreds of medical personnel from the mainland will arrive in Hong Kong from Monday to help treat Covid-19 patients.

Lam told a daily press briefing that the mainland health workers are coming at the request of the SAR government.

The first batch of 75 doctors, nurses and assistants will arrive in Hong Kong on Monday, while another 300 will come later in the week.

The CE added that more medical personnel will be coming in the near future, but didn’t give further information.

The mainland medical staff are exempted from obtaining the relevant licenses to practice in Hong Kong under an emergency regulation introduced at the end of last month.

The head of the Hospital Authority, Tony Ko, said these workers will mainly be deployed to the Asia-World Expo community treatment facility, where they will be treating elderly patients.

He dismissed concerns about the language barrier, saying they work in a very similar way to their Hong Kong counterparts.

“In terms of clinical treatment, we believe there wouldn’t be much of a problem, because it is very similar. On patients’ records, as you know we usually use English and for colleagues on the mainland, they usually use Chinese. But then this is something we have addressed. In the clinical system, we have included Chinese input,” Ko said.

“For the two teams there have been no problem in terms of communication. So we don’t expect much of a problem. But of course we will be careful.”

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive also announced that the Hospital Authority has procured a “very sufficient amount” of new anti-Covid pills from drugmakers Pfizer and MSD.

Carrie Lam said the antiviral drugs from MSD, called molnupiravir, have already arrived and are currently being used. The first batch of Pfizer pills, known as Paxlovid, will arrive on Monday and more batches will come over the next two to three months.

The government’s pandemic adviser, David Hui, said the two drugs – if administered to patients early – can reduce the risk of serious complications and hospitalisation by between 30 to 90 percent.

Experts said they recommend prescribing the drugs to high-risk groups, including elderly people who aren’t fully vaccinated as well as those who suffer from cancer and other long term illnesses such as diabetes.