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Letters

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form. Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification.
Meetings of the private hospitals association have been occurring almost daily since the start of the Covid-19 fifth wave. Those involved could have agreed for private hospitals to cease routine non-urgent admissions and focus all their resources on essential and emergency services.
This would not only reduce the risk of Covid-19 outbreaks within private hospitals but also free up medical staff who may be in a position to volunteer in beleaguered public hospitals.
Instead many private hospitals are continuing to provide elective, non-essential medical services while directing their Covid-positive patients with urgent medical needs to public hospitals.
Many pregnant patients booked for delivery in private hospitals are being turned away in labour because they or their partners have tested positive for Covid-19.
I welcome the news that the private hospital run by Chinese University will start taking Covid-positive patients next week. Other private hospitals are taking Covid-negative patients from the public system who require essential medical services.
However, this is only a small fraction of the contribution the private sector could achieve if it wanted to, and makes no attempt to stop the large number of Covid-positive private patients continuing to burden the public system. In the next few days all private hospitals must decide whether to set aside old rivalries and self-interest to collaborate in good faith and contribute at scale to the fight to save lives in Hong Kong, or remain on the sidelines.
I agree with Professor Yuen Kwok-yung that it is “morally wrong to turn away patients from private hospitals and refer them to Hospital Authority hospitals, when [those] hospitals are flooded like a battlefield situation”. To continue to do so risks the welfare of private patients and further compromises the care of public patients.
At least one private hospital needs to devote itself to the care of low-risk Covid-positive private patients and all other private hospitals and private clinics need to do what they can to support that service.
The private sector needs to collectively make a determined attempt to properly provide for its patients with Covid-19. In particular, if the private sector does not do everything it can to ensure safer options for an increasing number of pregnant patients booked to deliver in private hospitals who will test positive for Covid-19, it would be failing in its basic duty of care.
Our private medical sector is one of the most expensive in the world, and private health care expenditure accounts for 3 per cent of Hong Kong’s gross domestic product. Our reputation is at stake, and we all need to step up.
Dr Lucy Lord, Central
Rapid test must not decide students’ DSE fate
It is unfair to let a rapid test kit decide whether a student can sit for the Diploma of Secondary Education examinations, when there is a chance that either the kit or the result it produces is faulty. One result could instantly lay waste to two or three years of hard preparation – an unreasonably high price to pay for the student.
I suggest that all students who test positive at the exam venue be put in a separate room to complete the exam. They then can choose to complete all other sittings or void the results and use any alternative assessment method suggested by the Education Bureau.
If they are in quarantine because of Covid-19, then arrangements should also be made for them to sit for their examinations in specially designated venues. We should not let the pandemic run roughshod over our education and examination systems or dash the hopes of aspiring college freshmen when every day, we pull out all stops to defeat the virus.
Linda Kwok, Tseung Kwan O
Public exam backup plans are sound and welcome
The Education Bureau’s decision to bring the summer holiday forward to March and April for local primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong while allowing kindergartens and international schools some degree of flexibility owing to operational needs and other challenges, and its announcement of backup plans for the Diploma of Secondary Education exams, are prudent measures amid the Omicron outbreak.
Nothing matters more than students’ health and safety, and with hundreds of schools possibly earmarked for the implementation of universal mass testing, isolation and vaccination, closures of school campuses are necessary. It is only through effective control of the pandemic that students can safely resume face-to-face learning on campus.
Online learning has been widely adopted by schools in the territory to compensate for the loss of lesson time. However, it is at best a stopgap measure. Prolonged exposure to screens could exacerbate students’ eyesight problems, and the pedagogical effectiveness of months’ worth of online lessons is also questionable.
The invisible children: how online learning failed special needs students
Lack of in-person interaction with peers also has an emotional impact and affects the development of young children’s social skills.
Therefore, bringing the summer holiday forward, in the hope that face-to-face learning can resume in the summer, is a bold move.
As for the Diploma of Secondary Education, the current backup plans, which include pushing back the commencement date of the exam and evaluating candidates’ performance based on their school assessments in the worst-case scenario that the DSE needs to be cancelled, are also sensible.
Of course, candidates would like to sit the DSE this year without fear for their safety. Therefore, they should follow the exam authority’s guidelines and show negative rapid test results before entering exam venues. They should not put themselves, other candidates and exam personnel at risk if they test positive for Covid-19. Meanwhile, candidates should get vaccinated, continue to practise hand hygiene, wear face masks properly and avoid venturing outside.
The previous two DSE cohorts also took the exam amid the pandemic. With all safety measures taken, the current cohort should be able to weather the storm too.
Jason Tang, Tin Shui Wai


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Coronavirus Hong Kong

Amid the Covid-19 fifth wave, Hong Kong’s private hospitals must step up

Funeral home staff load a body onto a vehicle near patients being treated at a makeshift area outside Caritas hospital in Hong Kong on March 2. Photo: AFP 

Hong Kong must accept its Covid-19 setbacks and get on with the job of overcoming the pandemic

A health worker removes rainwater from a temporary Covid-19 testing tent in Central on February 20. Photo: Nora Tam

People in Singapore have their meals in an open-air area at the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre on February 18. In Singapore and many other places, there’s an acceptance the virus will be endemic. Photo: AFP

People walk past closed shops in Causeway Bay on February 23. Photo: Edmond So

How Hong Kong has made a hash of mainland’s ‘dynamic zero’ Covid-19 policy

A woman walks past a banner announcing the closure of a venue in Causeway Bay on January 8. Hong Kong’s wholesale closure of facilities is hurting its economy. Photo: AFP

Opinion


Readers discuss private hospitals’ response to the pandemic, and arrangements for the city’s university entrance exams



Readers discuss private hospitals’ response to the pandemic, and arrangements for the city’s university entrance exams.


.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Readers discuss private hospitals’ response to the pandemic, and arrangements for the city’s university entrance exams

Readers discuss private hospitals’ response to the pandemic, and arrangements for the city’s university entrance exams