Visiting hours will be extended in around 20 percent of wards at public hospitals by the end of July to allow for greater flexibility, the Hospital Authority announced.

For paediatric wards, visiting hours will be extended from four hours to 24-hour, around-the-clock access.

As for rehabilitation, convalescent, infirmary, palliative and hospice wards, visiting time will increase from four hours to nine hours.

However, there will be no extension for acute wards, where visiting time remains capped at four hours per day.

The limit of two visitors per patient at any one time also remains unchanged.

Dr Danny Tong, the authority's chief manager of nursing, said that the authority is "playing it safe" before considering further extensions.

“In acute settings, the clinical condition is not stabilised yet. And we have to have the proper, accurate diagnosis and treatment plan,” he said.

There is also an established mechanism to make special visiting arrangements for patients with specific care needs in acute wards, he added.

Citing the experience of several public hospitals that have already extended visiting time, Dr Tong stressed that extended hours actually reduce the workload for frontline nurses.

“For the traditional or prevailing arrangement, we have to fix the period of time to facilitate visiting, like two hours in the noontime and two hours in the evening. And then it creates a scenario that all visitors sort of pack into this narrow visiting time period,” he said.

“From our experience, it's like diverting the workload, spread evenly in the wider window period. And that's why, from our experience, there's no specific pressure, so in case that we have to make a very stringent or specific manpower arrangement to entertain this kind of request.”

The Kowloon Central Cluster will be the first to fully implement the changes on May 2, followed by the New Territories West Cluster on May 4.

The authority expects the new arrangements to be in effect territory-wide by the end of July.



Edited by Robert Kemp