Hong Kong’s novel coronavirus surge hit a new daily high yesterday with 2,071 cases, and health officials expect twice as many today due more than 4,500 preliminary positive cases.
All but 19 of yesterday’s confirmed cases are local infections.
Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said there are backlogs in testing, delays in the confirmation of infections and a sizeable patient admission bottleneck.
The CHP said post-mortem specimens which were taken from two elderly men in their 70s who recently died before being taken to hospital returned positive. Subsequent tests at the mortuaries showed the men carried the virus.
Two other elderly men with Covid-19 have died at public hospitals.
Ten Covid-19 patients were in a critical condition, including a three-year-old girl, officials said yesterday.
The Hospital Authority said more than 3,600 Covid-19 patients are currently in public hospitals or isolation facilities.
It said it would set up a hotline for thousands of patients who are waiting to be admitted to hospital.
In Macao, a 51-year-old non-resident worker who entered the city last Friday from Hong Kong has tested positive for Covid-19 and is currently in isolation at the Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane.
He has not displayed any symptoms and has been triple jabbed. His case has been classified as imported and asymptomatic, and has not been added to Macao’s Covid-19 tally which remains at 79, The Macau Post Daily reported.
