Monday February 28: There are 14,633 new community cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today. Video / NZ Herald
Bodies are piling up in Hong Kong's mortuaries as the city grapples with its worst outbreak since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Officials announced on Monday that hospital and public mortuaries have reached maximum capacity, following a record number of Covid deaths, with officials warning that a city-wide lockdown has notbeen ruled out.
On Monday, the city of 7.4 million reported 34,466 new infections and 87 deaths.
"There has been a surge of Covid-related deaths," said Lau Ka-hin, a senior administrator at Hong Kong's hospital authority. "We can't [fully] process the transferral of bodies, therefore you will see some bodies [piled up] in accident and emergency rooms.
Patients in hospital beds at a temporary holding area outside Caritas Medical Centre in Hong Kong on February 28, 2022. Photo / AP
"The bodies of deceased patients need to be moved from [public hospitals] to public mortuaries for autopsy and investigation," he added.
Dr Darryl Tse, a plastic surgeon in Hong Kong, told The Telegraph: "The hospital is chaotic. We didn't expect cases to climb so quickly. We don't know what to do with Covid patients – discharge them or keep them. It's out of control.
"The quarantine rules and social distancing don't seem to be having much effect."
Albert Au, a senior health department official, told The Financial Times that most of the roughly 1350 spaces at the city's three public mortuaries are full. Emergency rooms are also under immense pressure, with patients often examined in open-air triage areas before being taken inside for treatment.
Dozens of bodies are waiting in accident and emergency rooms to be transported to mortuaries, said Tony Ling, head of the city's Public Doctors Association.
52% of elderly people unvaccinated
Hong Kong has a large proportion of unvaccinated elderly people despite a recent uptick in vaccinations.
Many had not been inoculated, fearing side effects, and complacency due to the city's success in controlling the virus in 2021.
Hong Kong has a large proportion of unvaccinated elderly people despite a recent uptick in vaccinations. Photo / AP
Nearly 90 per cent of all adults have received one dose of the BioNTech or China's Sinovac vaccine, but the rate falls to just 48 per cent among those aged 80 or older.
Officials said that 91 per cent of those who have died in the current wave were not fully vaccinated.
Over the past month the virus has ripped through 600 care homes and disability centres.
Hong Kong has stuck firmly to a "dynamic zero" coronavirus policy which seeks to curb all outbreaks, like that in mainland China, where just 109,000 cases have been detected since the virus emerged – compared to Hong Kong's 205,000.
The government has hinted it may introduce a city-wide lockdown as it seeks to stem Covid's spread, while pandemic adviser David Hui urged residents to stock up on medical supplies such as flu medicines and rapid test kits.
Grocery shelves across several supermarkets emptied as residents raced to buy essentials.
A man carries rapid antigen test kits outside a market in Hong Kong on February 28, 2022. Photo / AP
Dr Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, blamed the city for its zero-Covid policy and low vaccine rates: "What was the purpose of zero-Covid if you aren't going to vaccinate highly vulnerable populations? The virus was always going to be there – it's not a hurricane that was going to go away.
"They now have a population with little immunity from vaccines or prior infections. There's no excuse. It shows the danger in these zero-Covid policies, they can't go on forever," Adalja said.
The seven-day average daily Covid deaths per one million puts Hong Kong at 6.03, the United States at 5.36 and France at 3.10.
While patients are no longer queuing outside most hospitals on beds, as pictured last week, Dr Tse said they are still waiting up to three days to enter hospital wards. The plastic surgeon is being deployed to work as a GP at a makeshift Covid hospital on Tuesday.
Tse added that Covid guidance has changed every day for the past week. "We simply cannot accept over 30,000 people every day at hospitals," he said. "People are frustrated, we were just about to get back to normality."
The World Health Organisation said Hong Kong's spiralling cases show that "we are not out of this pandemic yet".
Grocery shelves emptied as residents raced to buy essentials ahead of a possble city-wide lockdown. Photo / AP
Domestic workers fired after testing positive
The rapid spread of cases has also put the plight of domestic helpers in the spotlight after some were fired or made homeless by their employers when they tested positive for Covid-19.
Hong Kong has around 340,000 domestic helpers, most from the Philippines and Indonesia. Many families in the city depend on live-in helpers for housekeeping and to look after the elderly and children, with the minimum wage set at HK$4630 (NZ$877) per month.
Under Hong Kong law, migrant domestic workers must live with their employers.
But support groups and local media have reported that some workers have been kicked out or fired after testing positive.
One domestic helper, who was told to leave her home, told Reuters: "I was depressed, hopeless, and felt anxiety because I am in a foreign country." She said her employers gave her medicine, but told her to find a shelter to stay at so she did not infect the family.
"All I was thinking about was where to get food and where to find a place to stay because it was very cold outside," she said.
