Staff members wearing personal protective equipment, setup tents to protect patients lying in beds from the rain, at a makeshift treatment area outside a hospital, following the coronavirus disease outbreak in Hong Kong, China on Feb 17, 2022.HONG KONG - Hong Kong's coronavirus battle intensified on Thursday as authorities reported that new cases had multiplied by 60 times so far this month, and the city's leader said city-wide testing was being considered in the global financial hub.
Health authorities reported a record 6,116 confirmed cases on Thursday, up from 4,285 the previous day, with a further 6,300 preliminary positive cases. That takes the total since January to more than 16,600. There were 24 new deaths. "Because of the severe number of cases we need to speed up admission to hospitals and community isolation facilities," Undersecretary for Food and Health Chui Tak-yi told reporters. "The government is trying to ease all these bottlenecks."
"If the pandemic gets worse and if our rents are kept at the level now ... we will not survive," said Annie Tse, chairwoman of HKRMA. "Since protests and Covid it's been almost three years, how much more cash can we burn?" she said, referring to anti-government demonstrations in 2019.
But the scale and speed of the highly contagious Omicron variant has left authorities scrambling. Hospitals are operating at maximum or over capacity and long queues have formed outside testing centres, with some people waiting hours.
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
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