Hong Kong’s first study on using traditional Chinese medicine to treat patients with “long Covid” has found the therapy can ease symptoms such as fatigue in more than one in three patients.

The findings, announced at a press conference on Wednesday, came days after Hospital Authority chief executive Henry Fan Hung-ling called for a “significant expansion” of the role traditional Chinese medicine plays in public healthcare and greater collaboration between its practitioners and Western doctors.

“There were 1,390 patients treated with Chinese medicine before the fifth wave, and now there are 64,000 of them, so there has been a big increase in our capacity in Chinese medicine provision,” said Rowena Wong, the authority’s chief manager for the alternative treatment practice.

“In future, we will continue to proactively support the innovation and development of Chinese medicine within public hospitals.”

Hospital Authority Chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling.

Chinese medicine has played an increasingly larger role in public healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially after the fifth wave that peaked in March, when experts from the Greater Bay Area came to guide the city’s response in treating coronavirus patients at the makeshift facility at AsiaWorld-Expo.

Wong noted the city’s public outpatient clinics and hospitals offered a total of 1,800 appointments a day, with many of the patients aged 65 and above.

Published in international journal BioMed Central in August, the study was led by the authority with input from all three local institutions that have Chinese medicine as a discipline, namely Hong Kong, Chinese and Baptist universities.

In September 2020, the researchers recruited 150 Hongkongers who had recovered from Covid-19 and designed “individualised therapies” for them including acupuncture and taking herbs for three to six months, after which they were assessed using “objective tools” such as a test that involved six minutes of walking.

Professor Bian Zhaoxiang, Baptist University’s associate vice-president (Chinese medicine development) said 71 per cent of the participants were diagnosed with two Chinese medicine conditions, namely Qi deficiency of lung and spleen and Qi and Yin deficiency, characterised by symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea and dryness of mouth among others.

After six months of treatment, 16 per cent of participants passed the six-minute walk test, up from 10 per cent at the three-months mark, and 5 per cent prior to treatment. Passing the test means they could walk without much difficulty.

In questionnaires and consultations with the recovered patients, the researchers also found that 36.5 per cent of them – more than one in three – reported improvements in “long Covid” symptom fatigue, while 35.7 per cent of them noted relief from coughing, and 28.6 per cent from shortness of breath.

“The results are very encouraging and satisfactory,” said Lin Zhixiu, director of the School of Chinese Medicine at Chinese University. “We hope this study and future ones could help modernise and internationalise Chinese medicine, by building up more evidence for it.”

Unlike many other clinical studies, this one did not use a control group, the academics noted, but said it was still the first of its kind conducted in the city. A control group is given a placebo instead of the treatment so their results can be compared to those of the participants in the trial to gauge the effects of the medication.

Chinese medicine practitioner Chan Man-hon, who was not involved in the study, explained while a control group could have been set up and given vitamins, it might have been harder to prevent those participants from knowing they were not receiving the treatment because the herbs could have a recognisable taste.

Last week, Hospital Authority chairman Fan announced that a new scheme would see three “experienced and reputable” Chinese medicine practitioners from the Greater Bay Area loaned to the city for 10 months from October, to help guide a “significant expansion” in joint treatment with Chinese and Western medicine, beyond the three current areas, which are cancer alleviation, pain relief and stroke.

Health authorities on Wednesday recorded 3,911 new infections, 208 of which were imported and 14 deaths, bringing the city’s Covid-19 tally to 1,757,112 cases and 10,148 deaths.

Imported cases have risen each day since the government ended hotel quarantine for arrivals on Monday as part of an effort to lure people back to the city.

Given the stablised pandemic situation, the Hospital Authority said that from Friday, patients with a lower risk of infection, including those aged below 60 years old, or those older who had either received at least two vaccine doses or had taken one and had had a past coronavirus infection, would be allowed two visitors for one hour a day.

Up to two registered visitors can enter the ward to visit the patient at the same time.

Separately, the Department of Health announced a boy and a girl, both aged two, had developed temporary facial muscle weakness after receiving a Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine last week, adding their conditions were stable.