Health authorities on Friday reported 4,090 new local Covid infections and 180 imported cases, as the Hospital Authority (HA) warned that non-urgent healthcare services will inevitably be affected as numbers continue to rise.

Officials said another six Covid patients had died. They were aged between 72 and 99 and one of them was unvaccinated.

At present, 1,257 Covid patients are being treated in public hospitals, and two of them are in intensive care.

The HA's chief manager, Larry Lee, said “phase two” of a contingency plan has been triggered to increase the number of hospital beds set aside for Covid patients from 1,200 to 2,500, and to allocate more manpower to care for these patients.

He said non-urgent services will inevitably be affected as a result.

“The service adjustment would be mainly on the non-emergency service namely the elective surgery. However, another point I’d like to stress on is that ‘phase two’ is not a discreet phase. It is a continuum,” he said.

“So, we just mentioned that we entered phase two, and we still try to keep our service as much as possible,” Lee added.

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USEFUL LINKS
General Covid-19 situation: https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/
Community Clinics for Covid-19 patients: https://bit.ly/3a4BZFE
RAT reporting platform: https://www.chp.gov.hk/ratp/
Vaccination programme: https://www.covidvaccine.gov.hk/sen/
Vaccination pass scheme: https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/vaccine-pass.html
Hotline for Covid-positive patients: 1836 115