Health & Environment

Charlene Flores and her husband nearly got divorced in the last two hours of a 14-day quarantine. “We ended up arguing. There were a lot of rules. It really affected our mental well-being," said Ms Flores.  Those who have to be confined in a room for weeks report impacts on their mental health because of the resulting loneliness and anxiety. She is a French freelance photographer for Paris-based national newspapers and magazines and has lived in Hong Kong since January 2020. Ms Flores, her 14-month old daughter and her 36-year old husband stayed at the Iclub Ma Tau Wai Hotel. She arrived in Hong Kong on August 18.  Hong Kong has some of the strictest quarantine requirements in the world.  Depending on which risk level their originating country falls under, the Department of Health requires in-bound travellers to be quarantined at designated hotels for either two or three weeks. As of September, fully vaccinated Hong Kong residents from “high risk” (or Group A) countries, including the UK, France, India, and Thailand, had to be quarantined for 21 days.  Fully vaccinated travellers arriving from “medium risk” (or Group B) countries must test negative for Covid-19 and quarantine for 14 days while the unvaccinated in this group must quarantine for 21 days.  Currently, the only places that fall under the “low risk” (Group C) category include New Zealand, mainland China and Macao. Non-Hong Kong and Hong Kong residents are required to quarantine for seven days if vaccinated, and 14 if not. "It was a tough, expensive and stressful experience. We were always afraid that there might be a false negative test or being identified as a close contact," said Mrs Flores.  Karman Leung, Chief Executive of the Samaritan’s Hong Kong, an independent non-governmental organisation, said they receive approximately three to five calls …

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor 's latest policy address barely covered medical brain drain, as more doctors and nurses leave public hospitals because of poor workplace conditions and low salaries or emigrate. “I don’t have much expectation on the policy address,” said Chung Pak-chi, 20, a third-year medical student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, adding most of her peers did not want to practice locally due to intense workload and low salary. Since July 2020, the turnover rate for full-time doctors in public hospitals has reached 4.9%, said Hospital Authority Chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling in August, and 6.7% for nurses, a 0.9% increase from 2019. Emigration contributed to staff loss, Fan said, and the situation is “concerning.” Private hospitals also poach talents from the public sector, worsening the situation there, he added. Gloria Law, 25, a nurse with three-years experience in a public hospital, said the workload she endured was “intense and heavy,” adding that each nurse had to take care of 12 patients at one time. A pay freeze announced by the Civil Service Bureau in June further widened the salary gap between nurses in the private and public sectors, Law said. Her salary after three years in a public hospital is less than what a nurse in the private sector makes in the first year. “The salary is not appealing enough as well,” she said. Despite these challenges, Lam highlighted government healthcare policies in her address, describing them as “multi‑pronged,” but stopped short of laying out new concrete measures. In September, the Hospital Authority extended retirement from 60 to 65 and created promotions for nurses to pursue specialisation. In August, the government proposed amendments to the Medical Registration Bill to allow non-locally trained doctors - regardless of their Hong Kong permanent residence status …

The booking system for foreign domestic helpers at Penny’s Bay Quarantine Centre on Lantau Island reopens today, following a halt since Sept. 19. The 1,000 rooms on offer were fully booked up in minutes.  Reservations for Oct. 22 to 28 provide 350 quotas for foreign domestic helpers to undergo quarantine. Phailin Leesirichaikul, a Thai missionary living in Hong Kong said that by the time she had gone through a series of steps to get to the booking page, all the quotas had already been taken. “Within three to five minutes after the system opened up, all of the rooms were fully booked, which made me anxious because the visa of my Indonesian helper is about to expire, but I cannot book a quarantine room for her,” she said. In order to arrange foreign domestic helpers to come to Hong Kong in a gradual and orderly manner and to guard against imported Covid-19 cases, Penny’s Bay Quarantine Centre will continue to receive at most 50 helpers each day, according to a government press release.  The centre will provide an additional 200 units from Oct. 22, that’s a total of 1,000 units for inbound foreign domestic workers. Employers and employment agencies can make bookings from 9 a.m every Monday for the following week. According to government figures, as of Oct. 1, among the 6,060 Filipino foreign domestic helpers who arrived in Hong Kong between Aug. 30 and Sept. 24, there were 26 confirmed Covid cases. That’s a rate of 4.3%.  Law Chi-kwong, Secretary for Labour and Welfare, said in his blog post yesterday that such a rate should be taken seriously.  “On a daily basis, we will check the epidemic situation of foreign domestic helpers in their countries of origin, the diagnosis of workers upon arrival, and the operation and booking of …