Private hospitals would risk a system collapse if they took in Covid-19 patients, a sector leader said on Wednesday, adding that such facilities were also facing staff shortages amid Hong Kong’s worst coronavirus outbreak.

Dr William Ho Shiu-wei, chairman of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association, was responding to an appeal from the University of Hong Kong’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, a top infectious diseases expert, who urged private hospitals to do more as public facilities were looking like “battlefields”.

Public hospitals have been inundated with Covid-19 patients for weeks, leading to congested wards, crowded corridors and even beds placed outdoors at some facilities.

Yuen had said in an earlier message to the media that it would be “morally wrong” to turn away Covid-19-positive patients from private hospitals and refer them to public facilities, when the latter were “flooded like a battlefield situation”.

He added that the quarantine policy for health care workers at private hospitals should be the same as public facilities, where staff who come into contact with Covid-19 patients in a clinical setting do not need to undergo isolation because they are equipped with protective gear.

Yuen said this would allow private hospitals to take in people with mild symptoms under outpatient and inpatient services, just like at public facilities.

“[The] policy should now be changed because about one in five to one in 20 among Hong Kong’s population is infected,” Yuen warned.

But Ho said the private health care sector also faced a shortage in manpower.

“Private hospitals are increasingly losing staff [to infections] or as close contacts, so much so that hospitals have to consider or are already forced to cut down admission bookings, operating theatre sessions, etc,” Ho wrote in a reply to the Post.

He said stringent measures were already in place, and private hospitals had also adopted the same rules as public facilities by asking infected staff and close contacts to quarantine and only return to work if they test negative with rapid antigen test kits on their seventh day of isolation.

“But we are still seeing a worsening situation in available ward manpower,” he said.

Yuen had also pointed out that nearly all health care workers in private hospitals were vaccinated, similar to their counterparts in public hospitals.

Their wards maintained the minimum requirement of six air changes per hour, and every worker could wear an N95 mask and full protective gear, similar to those working in public hospitals.

“All isolation wards in public hospitals are full already, and our general wards are also taking in Covid-19 patients,” Yuen told the Post separately. “What’s the difference now? Every worker is wearing an N95 mask.”

Ho, however, countered: “Over-simplistic generalisations without trying to understand the real issues faced by other parties is not going to help, nor is finger-pointing instead of dialogue and constructive engagement.”

He said there were a number of patients in private hospitals who tested positive after admission, and many were still “stranded” because of delays with Hospital Authority taking them in.

Such patients have continued to receive care in negative-pressure rooms designed to hold patients with infectious diseases in private hospitals.

He added that private facilities were worried about the risk of losing more staff which would “topple even the private system”.

“Unlike the Hospital Authority, our hospital licence is at stake if the Department of Health finds out we are operating certain wards below the required minimum nursing ratio. We would have to close wards,” he wrote.

Private hospitals have also been taking in more non-Covid patients recently. More than 200 coronary patients from public hospitals will be transferred to five private hospitals for cardiovascular check-ups and treatment, a move supported by a donation from the Li Ka Shing Foundation.

Cancer patients receiving specific surgeries are expected to be the next batch of patients who will move from public to private facilities under the scheme.

Dr Larry Lee Lap-yip, a chief manager of the Hospital Authority, urged private hospitals on Wednesday to let recovered Covid-19 patients barred by their still-positive test readings use their services.

Under current partnership plans between public and private hospitals, government facilities will refer some of their non-Covid-19 patients in need of services such as dialysis to private institutions under public rates.

Private hospitals have also stepped up their intake of patients to help relieve the burden on public facilities, but their reluctance to take in Covid-19 patients has caused problems.

Lee said 60 patients in need of kidney dialysis had been sent back to public facilities because they tested positive for Covid-19.

“We hope private hospitals – if these patients have already recovered – can continue to let them go to private hospitals for kidney dialysis,” he said, noting the virus was already widespread in the community.