Hong Kong has recorded Covid-19 outbreaks in some care homes and hospital wards amid a recent surge in cases worldwide, health experts have said, urging high-risk groups to get their latest booster jabs.
Professor Lau Yu-lung, chairman of the Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventable Diseases, said on Saturday that health surveillance data showed Covid-19 activity had been on the rise in recent weeks.
“The outbreaks in care homes are worrying. There were seven outbreaks [from the end of July to early August] with 60 patients,” he told a radio programme.
According to the Centre for Health Protection, another four outbreaks involving 29 cases occurred at care homes for the elderly and other institutions from August 4 to 9.
Separately, the government last week also reported that 20 patients aged 47 to 94 in the infirmary unit for Grantham Hospital had tested positive for the coronavirus since July 31.
Lau said that dense and crowded living environments and poor air circulation could be behind the outbreaks.
“Long-term hospitalisation is a situation where a lot of people are living very densely, probably in a closed space for a long period of time. As the weather is hot now, the hospitals have turned on the air conditioner with windows and doors closed,” he said.
“The air circulation and the standards for air change must be handled carefully.”
Lau added that patients undergoing long-term hospitalisation and those with chronic illnesses should receive Covid-19 booster shots, while the public should maintain good personal hygiene.
The centre said on Thursday that the latest surveillance data recorded between July 28 and August 3 showed that the overall local activity of the virus had continued to increase since June.
Among the 7,710 respiratory specimens collected by the centre, 699 tested positive for Covid-19 compared with 709 the week before that.
The number of severe coronavirus cases, including fatal ones, reached 19 over the same period, compared with 20 during the previous seven-day period.
Lau said he believed the results for the centre’s viral load testing for sewage water had already peaked, dropping from 537,000 copies per litre between July 21 and 27 to 450,000 a week after.
He said that according to the World Health Organization, 45,000 Covid-19 cases were recorded in Europe over the past seven days, compared with 4,500 in the western Pacific region, where Hong Kong is located.
“The population in the western Pacific region is much larger than Europe,” he said.
“It shows that the Covid-19 pandemic situation in Europe is far worse than that of Hong Kong.”
Dr Mike Kwan Yat-wah, an honorary clinical associate professor from the University of Hong Kong’s department of paediatrics and adolescent medicine, also said he had observed a phenomenon involving three cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS) among children from different hospitals in the past two to three weeks.
According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, MIS is a rare but serious condition associated with Covid-19 which causes inflammation among various internal and external body parts, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes and the gastrointestinal tract.
The main risk factor for developing the syndrome was being infected with Covid-19, but many affected children had no or few symptoms of the coronavirus, the US body said.
Trends of multisystem inflammatory syndrome cases usually followed Covid-19 infections, with its peaks often emerging about a month after coronavirus cases had topped out.
Kwan said the cases in Hong Kong were patients mostly aged eight to 10 years old, with their syndromes triggered by Covid-19 infections.
“Previously, there were 80 to 90 cases found in Hong Kong and it had been quiet for a long time,” he told the same radio programme.
“But in the recent two to three weeks, three cases were reported in different hospitals including public and private ones. You can say it is quite unusual.”
Kwan said children affected by the syndrome had fevers for a long period of time, and suffered from rashes, red eyes and lips, inflammation in organs including the liver, as well as an increased inflammation level in blood.
He urged parents to seek medical help for their children as soon as possible if they were affected by the syndrome, warning that delayed treatment could lead to heart problems.
