Hong Kong cuts isolation in facilities to 7 days for COVID-19 patients who test negative as city reports 24 new deaths

Hong Kong authorities announced on Thursday they have cut the isolation period for COVID-19 patients in hospitals and community facilities to seven days if they test negative to free up more spaces to cater to rapidly rising infections.

The city reported 6,116 new confirmed cases, with 6,107 locally transmitted.

Authorities said they also recorded 6,300 preliminary positive cases.  

A total of 24 more patients have died from the coronavirus.

Sara Ho, the Hospital Authority’s chief manager (patient safety and risk management), said 15 of them passed away in the past 24 hours, while nine died between Feb. 11, 2022 and Tuesday.

She explained there was a delay in reporting due to the surge in cases.

The 24 patients were aged between 36 and 98.

Ho noted that the youngest was suffering from a chronic illness.

She added most of them were unvaccinated, but did not give the exact numbers.

To tackle the long admission times, Under Secretary for Food and Health Chui Tak-yi announced that health authorities had adjusted the exit criteria for patients isolating in hospitals and community facilities.

He said that patients who test positive can now leave hospitals or community facilities and go home if they test negative seven days later.

However, they will need to stay at home and cannot go out until they get another negative test result seven days later.

Chui said this relaxation of isolation requirement applies only to those not living in a high-risk household.

These include those who do not have elderly members who are more than 70 years old, pregnant women, and people undergoing hemodialysis and immunotherapy at home.

The undersecretary added that for those waiting to be admitted to hospital, if they have waited for 14 days and test negative, they can also be regarded as not carrying the risk of transmission and can leave their home.

“The new measures… are based on the characteristics of the Omicron virus and also the relevant experts’ views on whether it is safe from the infectious disease control perspective to release the individual from these facilities based on test results,” said Chui.

“Based on this and also the need to increase the turnover of these facilities, we adopted this new measure.”