Hong Kong Kept Covid At Bay For Two Years. What Went Wrong?

The beds pile up outside Hong Kong’s Caritas hospital. In the cold night, elderly patients lie on gurneys covered with blankets and thermal foil sheets.

- Helen Davidson TAIPEI and Sum Lok-kei Hong Kong

A woman in pink folds her arms against the chill, while another reaches across her bed in an apparent gesture of comfort to a neighbour. Nearby, others crowd into yellow and blue spillover tents lining the car park edges. The hospital staffattend people calling out when they can, but they are outnumbered. Wails from patients carry through the air.

There were similar scenes across the city, where 11 public hospitals were operating at or beyond capacity as of last Friday. Private hospitals refuse to take Covid patients. Photos supplied to the Guardian showed a treatment room inside one hospital earlier last week (88% capacity) with gurneys three deep across the thoroughfare, on a floor strewn with garbage.

Health workers and residents who spent two years under strict Covid controls are now asking how it all went so wrong. The city that had managed to quash outbreak after outbreak was finally being engulfed and the authorities didn’t seem to be ready.

At North Lantau hospital, a doctor said frontline medics can no longer keep up with the mounting caseload. More than 10,000 Covid patients are waiting for hospital treatment or isolation, with thousands more added to the backlog each day.