CE visits Kai Tak Holding Centre (with photos/video)
The Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam, today (March 30) visited the Kai Tak Holding Centre at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal to inspect the prepration and implementation relating to the admission of COVID-19 elderly patients as well as the provision of care and treatment services for them.
The Kai Tak Holding Centre, converted from the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, is managed by the Social Welfare Department (SWD) with around 1 200 beds in total. The first phase of the operation, covering about 400 beds, started last Monday (March 21). The care services and medical support are provided by the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals and the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine under The University of Hong Kong respectively. The remaining beds, totalling about 800, will come into service tomorrow (March 31). The care service will be provided by the Haven of Hope Christian Service and the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and medical support by the Town Health Medical & Dental Services.
Accompanied by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Dr Law Chi-kwong, the Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan, and the Chief Executive of the Hospital Authority (HA), Dr Tony Ko, Mrs Lam received a briefing by the Director of Social Welfare, Mr Gordon Leung, and representatives of the care and medical teams on the operation of the centre. It covered the workflow of the admission of elderly patients, the services provided by the centre and the collaboration between various teams. She was pleased to learn that new arrangements had been implemented by the SWD from this week onwards, allowing residential care homes for the elderly with residents testing positive for COVID-19 to contact the SWD and the Centre for Health Protection under the Department of Health directly for arrangements to send those residents with mild or no symptoms to various holding centres upon assessment; and that, meanwhile, the holding centres will continue to receive recovering elderly who are assessed by the HA as suitable for admission upon the HA's referral. Mrs Lam expressed her gratitude to the various institutions for responding to the call of the Government to take part in the operation of the holding centres and integrating elderly services with healthcare services to enhance the quality of services for the elderly.
Also, Mrs Lam visited the parts of the centre that would be open tomorrow and noted that the HKBU would deploy a team of Chinese medicine practitioners to provide Chinese medicine treatment service for the elderly in the centre with a view to practising service integration of Chinese and Western medicines. Pointing out that the use of Chinese medicine in treating COVID-19 patients had achieved remarkable results in the Mainland, she said that she believed the Mainland Chinese medicine expert group of the Central Authorities having arrived in Hong Kong would provide pragmatic advice on the treatment for confirmed patients, especially the elderly, strengthening the Government’s pursuit of the anti-epidemic strategy of reducing deaths, severe cases and infections and fostering the long-term Chinese medicine development of Hong Kong.
Mrs Lam said, "With more holding centres coming into operation, together with several hundred contract care workers recruited by the SWD locally and directly from the Mainland, deployed thereat at after training, the Government shall enhance the care and treatment services for the infected elderly in order to ease the pressure on public hospitals and residential care homes for the elderly."
