The fifth wave of the epidemic has infected more than one million people in Hong Kong and killed more than 6,000 people. Elderly care homes have even fallen victim to this wave of epidemics. More than 60% of the deceased came from home care homes.
Up to now, nearly 90% of residential care homes for the elderly have experienced outbreaks, and the daily number of elderly deaths has not decreased significantly.
The Chief Executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, reiterated on Thursday (24th) that the current phased focus of the SAR government's anti-epidemic work has been on "three reductions, three heavy and one priority", including promoting the vaccination of the elderly as soon as possible.
She described that a lot of work has been carried out along with this new direction, but these overdue remedial work can hardly conceal that the government ignored the risk of infection in residential care homes for the elderly in the early stages of the fight against the epidemic. Thousands of elderly people have died due to insufficient protection measures.
Residential elders get injections slowly
The Secretary for the Civil Service, Nip Tak-kuen, said last year that the government would use all means to increase the vaccination rate of the elderly, including arranging for elderly homes to be vaccinated against the new crown through the annual flu vaccination process, but the vaccination rate has not improved significantly.
In the early days of the outbreak, the vaccination rate of the elderly over 70 years old was still less than 40%, and the vaccination rate of those over 80 years old was only slightly more than 20%.
At that time, scholars and industry insiders had already warned that this wave of epidemics would break out in a "tsunami-like" manner, and elderly care homes would bear the brunt of the outbreak, becoming the hardest hit areas.
Once a confirmed case occurs in a residential home, many private medical institutions will refuse to come to the home for injections; JP Medical is one of the few institutions that will continue to provide services as usual, speeding up the vaccination of uninfected elderly in the residential home to reduce the risk of serious illness.
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Officials should be aware of the crowded environment and density of local institutions, so it is not difficult to predict that institutions will be the weakest link in the new wave of epidemics.
Even though vaccination is an individual choice of the elderly, based on the premise of individual and group safety, the government can take more active measures to promote the elderly to be vaccinated, such as requiring the elderly to move into an isolation center.
Unfortunately, due to the improper coordination of the officials in charge, various problems occurred in the vaccination of the elders in the residential home. For example, the outreach team was once instructed to wait until there were no new cases in the residential home for two weeks before entering the home for vaccination. It is a misunderstanding to say that this guideline is misunderstood. Another example is that the elderly in some residential homes clearly agreed to the injection, but due to the coordination problem of the government departments, the vaccination was delayed and eventually passed away.
Reverse isolation dragged on and off
On the other hand, as early as early February, Yuan Guoyong, a government expert consultant and chair professor of the Department of Microbiology of the University of Hong Kong, proposed the measures of "reverse isolation" to protect the lives and health of the elderly.
However, the government has not been decisive in implementing relevant measures on the grounds that there are not enough nursing staff.
In particular, nursing homes for the elderly have always been the responsibility of the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Law Chi-kwong, but only after the epidemic caused the death of more than 1,000 elderly people, he stated that he was preparing for "reverse isolation" measures. Residential homes participated in the plan, but at the same time he also pointed out that due to the problem of manpower arrangements, the "closed-loop management" could not be adopted, and the epidemic prevention work of the residential homes was still unable to keep up with the development of the epidemic.
After this wave of epidemics is over, there are many things that need to be reviewed, but what is more important is how much of this epidemic is a natural disaster and how much is a man-made disaster. I believe many citizens expect the government to have a clear statement.
Compared with other regions, Singapore has successively adopted "closed-loop management" for residential care homes in the early stage of the epidemic, requiring the staff of residential care homes to stay in hotels, in order to isolate the virus from the elderly at higher risk as much as possible.
In addition, the proportion of deaths in Hong Kong institutions has reached 60% of the total deaths, which is several times higher than that of the United States (15.6%) and Singapore (14%), which are also severely affected by the epidemic.
The society cannot help but ask: In addition to the cramped and cramped environment for the elderly in Hong Kong than in other areas, is there still a responsibility for the lack of government protection measures in this situation?
The transmissibility of the Omicron variant is amazing, but it cannot be denied that its severe disease rate is lower than the original virus or other variants.
Many studies have shown that the rate of severe cases such as pneumonia caused by the Omicron variant is only about one-sixth of that of the Delta variant, but it has caused the death of thousands of citizens in Hong Kong, mainly the elderly in nursing homes. Naturally, it cannot be ruled out that it is related to the serious lag in the government's contingency measures.
As Chief Executive Carrie Lam said, there are many things to review after this wave of epidemics is over.
In the end, how much of this epidemic is a natural disaster and how much is a man-made disaster? I believe that many citizens expect the government to have a clear statement.
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