The Doctor Will See You Now [Non-Fiction]

Chapter 99: The COVID Series

A cruise called the Diamond Princess has been allowed to dock in Japan after a breakout of nCoV on a cruise of 3700 people, infecting 542 people, 53 of which are from HK. 330 of those onboard are from HK. Japanese Infectious diseases professor Kentaro Iwata said the quarantine measures onboard are "completely inadequate". Our government is making plans to repatriate people who test preliminarily negative (but have a chance of turning positive later, especially if their test was done too early in their infection) back to HK for a 14-day isolation period. The problem is not everyone 'repatriated' are from HK. Most are. Some are from mainland China. People who don't have a right to live or work in HK, who don't contribute in taxes to the HK system, and who don't have a right to access our healthcare system. Should they become unwell during their quarantine, they'll be transported to our local hospital for healthcare, the 5k HKD-a-day bill for which they probably won't pay (as is the case for a lot of mainlanders coming to HK for healthcare; they just skip the bill). There is literally no need for mainlanders to 'return' to HK when they are docked in Japan. They could return to China or get healthcare in Japan. Meanwhile, there are over 2500 HKers still stuck in Wuhan / Hubei with no plans to repatriate them yet.

The first batch of passengers have just arrived and one woman has already been seen going out for meals with her friends on day 1 instead of staying in quarantine. Excellent honesty.

Also, we just had the second confirmed case of death in HK on 19 Feb 2020 due to nCoV today and have a total of 62 confirmed cases in HK.

A woman who fell and broke a bone had surgery in a different HK hospital and underwent an operation to fix the broken bone. Three days later, she tested positive for nCoV. A few of the staff in contact with her care have developed symptoms and at least 10 have been put in isolation awaiting results.

Edit: She is the relative of a case confirmed nCoV positive only a few days prior to her admission to hospital. She didn't tell anyone. She lives with that case. We always ask on admission if 1) the patient has travelled out of HK within the past 2 weeks; 2) what occupation they have (to get an idea of how high risk they are to be exposed, like medical staff and immigration staff are considered high risk); 3) if they have any known contact with any known confirmed cases; and 4) if they have been in contact with any local outbreaks of any disease.

Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung assures the HK people that the nCoV epidemic is now under control. My department laughed (better than crying, I suppose). Infectious Diseases centre head Dr. Ho Pak-Leung said the comment is extremely wrong and the situation is definitely not under control until at least if there are no new infected cases for at least 14 days (the current accepted incubation period, although it can be up to 26 days). He has demanded Cheung publically apologise for lying to the public. We still have daily confirmed new infected cases, including people who have had contact with infected cases but have never travelled to Wuhan themselves (ergo they are people-to-people infection cases).