At least 10 foreign domestic workers were forced to sleep on the streets or denied treatment after testing positive for the coronavirus amid a surge in infections in Hong Kong, several migrant workers rights groups warned on Friday.

Charities and rights groups have sounded alarm bells after several domestic workers were abandoned when they tested positive, with a lack of government assistance forcing NGOs to step in to help.

Anna*, 35, was left to sleep at a park in Yau Ma Tei for two nights after receiving an SMS message confirming she had contracted the coronavirus on Tuesday. She was due to fly back to the Philippines on Wednesday following a visa denial.

“I felt cold, I was shaking,” Anna said, referring to her nights of sleeping rough.

She queued up at a public hospital for 10 hours but was turned away because the facility was at full capacity. She was then advised to quarantine at home as she had no symptoms. She also tried to reach out to the Philippine consulate for help.

Thanks to the efforts of multiple NGOs, Anna was finally placed at a shelter yesterday, and was able to take a rapid antigen test that produced a negative result.

“I’m happy yet confused,” she said. “Happy because I found a place to stay but also confused and worried because I don’t know when I can fly back to the Philippines and how long I need to stay [in the shelter].”

Hong Kong’s fifth wave, fuelled by the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, has resulted in surging case numbers since the start of January, exceeding the total infection tally of all previous waves combined.

The local government’s pandemic strategy has left some 350,000 migrant domestic workers without any information on what to do if they test positive for Covid-19. There was also no directive to employers on how to assist them with self-isolation or admittance to hospital.

Instead, a migrant domestic worker coalition of more than 14 NGOs was working together to address the needs of domestic workers during the outbreak.

Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch of the Centre for Health Protection, said domestic workers should wait to be sent to isolation facilities.

“I understand quite a lot of foreign domestic helpers are part of the family clusters that are confirmed, but I have no exact figures,” Chuang said.

But Manisha Wijesinghe, executive director of HELP for Domestic Workers, said that health authorities should provide more clarity and assistance on what needs to be done if someone tests positive.

“[We were] expecting it, but the urgency was very much unexpected because suddenly on Wednesday we got a call saying there were these women who were sleeping outside, shivering and really needed support,” she said.

A domestic worker who tested positive forced to sit outside North Lantau Hospital after being denied treatment.

Wijesinghe said the NGO was handling a total of 45 calls for help as of Friday, with about 10 of the requests involving domestic helpers who had tested positive. Other issues included people looking for shelter after having their employment terminated or running into legal problems.

She also said it was difficult to gauge the emerging crisis as they were only in contact with cases that had reached out for help and could not rule out other unreported incidents.

In another case, Maria*, 39, received an SMS message at the airport on Tuesday informing her that she had tested positive for the virus, which prevented her from boarding a long-awaited flight back home to the Philippines. She was due to leave the city that day as her visa had expired.

Airport staff instructed Maria to contact the police, who then told her to queue at North Lantau Hospital. She was finally placed in isolation at Penny’s Bay.

Eman Villanueva, a spokesman of the Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body, said the treatment of foreign domestic helpers amid the fifth wave of the pandemic was “cruel and inhumane”.

“The government just throws us on the street when we get sick,” Villanueva said in an online joint press conference on Friday.

Eni Lestari, chairwoman of the International Migrants Alliance and a domestic worker herself, said her peers had been on the front lines helping families throughout the pandemic, such as taking on more work by looking after children and the elderly.

“Now we are being neglected, we are being denied services, we are being abandoned,” she said.

Villanueva and Lestari also said that consulates have been too slow to provide information and support, leaving NGOs to self-mobilise and offer help.

Philippine Consul General Raly Tejada appealed to all employers to follow the law and “exercise utmost compassion in these trying times” if their helper tests positive for the coronavirus.

“We all know it’s illegal to terminate sick workers but it is more appalling to ask them to leave [their accommodation] given their vulnerable condition,” Tejada told the Post.

The Indonesian consulate said they were in “intensive communication” with the Labour Department to seek viable assistance for domestic workers, especially those who have contracted Covid-19.

The consulate said it was concerned about reports of employers dismissing sick domestic helpers or forcing them to leave their living space, adding that it violated the Employment Ordinance.

Labour authorities did not provide the Post with an estimate on the number of domestic workers who were terminated from their job after testing positive for the coronavirus.

A department spokesperson said that employers should not dismiss domestic helpers who had tested positive and told them to continue to provide medical care and living space as part of employment regulations.

Meanwhile, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor reiterated in a press conference that employers should ask their domestic workers to stay home during their Sunday rest days and warned that law enforcement would “not show mercy” to anyone violating the two-person gathering limit.