Finally a Bit of Progress

Patients waiting outside showed hospitals at overcapacity

Days after Covid-19 patients lay in gurneys in the rainy chilly weather, someone from above ordered them to be moved inside and by this evening they were as temperatures dropped to 9 degrees Celsius this weekend.

Why did it take so long and how come emergency provisions were not made? Are senior government officials blind to what is going on that it finally took today for Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to say something about it?

Lam announced postponement of CE election

It is outrageous that anyone in Hong Kong, old or young, Chinese or not to be treated in this way in this city's healthcare system. It has been ignored for so long regardless of the pandemic that there were shortages of doctors and nurses and now we have scenes of one medical professional attending to 20 patients outside.

The other group of people badly mistreated by the government are foreign domestic helpers. There are cases of some who quit because their employer was too overbearing and then caught Covid, or their employer fired them for being infected with the virus, and these helpers were left with no where to sleep except on the streets. 

When asked what help the Centre of Health Protection could give them, Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan basically didn't have an answer except that they should self-isolate before they were contacted... where is the compassion?

This evening Lam said employers should persuade their helpers to stay at home even on their day off, and that this coming weekend the police "will not show mercy anymore".  

Foreign domestic helpers are targeted for fines

Meanwhile on the weekends, police officers target helpers who gather together and hand them fines of HK$5,000 for gathering in more than groups of two. 

Their monthly salary is under HK$5,000 -- how can they even afford to pay these fines?

One woman who is in touch with one or two of these helpers has set up a fundraising page and raised over HK$700,000 in donations to help these women pay these fines. They are unfairly targeted, when there are places in Central where numerous expats meet up drinking alcohol -- why not fine them too?

The inequities of this city were already bad when the pandemic started, but have become more cruel as Covid-19 wears us down day by day.

This evening Lam announced the election for the chief executive would be pushed back from March 27 to May 8 in order to focus on the health crisis at hand. No one was surprised, though a week ago Lam claimed because the election committee only involved just over 1,000 people that the race to pick the next leader would not be interrupted.

Luo held a video meeting with business leaders

But perhaps with Xi Jinping admonishing the local administration for what appears to be a lax effort in battling the virus, Lam has finally made the call to postpone the election.

Today there were 3,629 cases reported, but 7,600 preliminary, and Lam says it will take at least two months to get the fifth wave under control.

Also this afternoon business leaders, or shall we say billionaires had a video conference call with liaison director Luo Huining, who was seeing who could offer what. This was the ultimate exercise in displaying patriotism.

Tycoon Richard Li Tzar-kai, who heads the ViuTV local television channel and the Now TV entertainment platform, announced the 12 members of the popular group Mirror would become "anti-pandemic ambassadors". 

Mirror will be anti-pandemic ambassadors

While New World Development CEO Adrian Cheng Chi-kong said he would free up the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre for community testing purposes, and Peter Lee Ka-kit, co-chairman of the Henderson Land Development, said his group would offer up a 20-hectare site on Lam Kam Road in the New Territories for an "instant" hospital.

Others offered to ramp up the acquisition of rapid antigen tests for low-income people and frontline healthcare staff, and bring in more food and goods into Hong Kong. 

But will this be enough to effectively fight the virus?