Fifteen medical workers at First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University depart Guangzhou, Guangdong province, for Hong Kong to help with the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, March 16, 2022. (ZHENG ERQI/CHINA DAILY)
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor expressed her appreciation on Wednesday to the hundreds of mainland medical workers who are about to finish their mission in helping Hong Kong fight its worst wave of the pandemic.
In a social media post, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said that in the past month, the mainland medical workers have worked closely with their Hong Kong counterparts to care for COVID-19 patients at the community treatment facility at AsiaWorld-Expo
In a social media post, Lam said that in the past month, the mainland medical workers have worked closely with their Hong Kong counterparts to care for COVID-19 patients at the community treatment facility at AsiaWorld-Expo.
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Lam said that with their joint efforts, the pandemic situation in the city has eased and the number of COVID-19 patients in AsiaWorld-Expo has decreased significantly. She said she believes the mainland workers will return to the mainland in batches later.
Lam also said that the assistance they provided showed that medical workers, whether trained locally or overseas, can serve patients well as long as they come from accredited medical schools and have a professional attitude.
Lam added that this is also the reason behind her decision to actively push forward the introduction of non-local doctors in the city to address its acute shortage of medical workers.
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At the request of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, about 400 mainland medical workers arrived in the city in mid-March to aid in the city’s anti-pandemic fight. They all have experience in treating COVID-19 patients, and many of them are fluent in Cantonese and English, the two most spoken languages in Hong Kong.
In the last two weeks, the number of Hong Kong’s daily infections has been fewer than 1,000. As of April 17, the mainland medical team has treated 822 confirmed patients, and 780 of them have been discharged.