Health authorities on Wednesday said private hospitals were making more beds available to take in patients from public hospitals to tackle a rising Covid-19 caseload as Hong Kong's daily tally nears the 10,000 mark.

There were 9,495 new coronavirus cases reported for the day, including 228 imported infections.

Nine more people with Covid, aged between 34 and 97, passed away.

Almost 2,600 patients were receiving treatment in public hospitals, with 15 of them in intensive care.

In a statement, health secretary Lo Chung-mau said at least 380 beds were available in 13 private hospitals to take in non-Covid patients from public hospitals, with the occupancy rate standing at around 70 percent as of 5pm on Tuesday.

A week ago, the figure was less than 50 percent for the first batch of 364 private hospital beds.

Lo said he's pleased the occupancy rate has gone up, adding that individual private hospitals could still take in more patients.

At a daily coronavirus briefing, Lau Ka-hin, a chief manager of the Hospital Authority, said officials have established a good rapport with private hospitals.

"We will continue to liaise with private hospitals to increase the number of beds when the Covid admission is increased," he said.

"Our communication, our working relationship with private hospitals are much better now. The turnover, the number [of patients] who are admitted to private hospitals [has increased] in the past one or two weeks."

On admitting Covid patients, Lau said public hospitals wanted to give priority to those in serious condition.

"We are admitting quite a lot of the elderly to hospitals for treatment of Covid as well as other medical illnesses, because we know that many of the elderly have other medical diseases, for example hypertension. Some of them even have cancer. We are screening the cases according to our clinical judgement," he said.

"The mild cases who can be cared for at home will not be admitted at this moment, because we want to reserve our beds for serious cases, the cases who need to stay in the hospital."

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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