The Quiet Guardians on the Periphery
From the beginning of the 2020 Lunar New Year to the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2021, Hong Kong lived alongside COVID-19 for a full 20 months. During that time it was like riding a “roller coaster”: there were extremely severe periods and calmer, more stable moments, and then suddenly a new wave would arise — the Buddhist temple cluster, the dancing cluster ... and so on. Fortunately, Hong Kong people's awareness of epidemic prevention was high and everyone held to their posts; as the anti-epidemic measures were gradually put into practice and followed, one difficulty after another was overcome. Compared with neighbouring countries, the harm COVID-19 has done to Hong Kong is relatively “low”.
The breathing space we have today has, in fact, not come easily. Looking back to mid-2020, when the hospital's anti-epidemic measures were raised from “serious level” to “emergency level”, the atmosphere in the hospital was extremely tense — a time of deep water and scorching fire — with negative-pressure wards being built without stop, infection control training stepped up, central protective centres being put up ... and so on. But let us not forget that at the time there were sporadic failures of elderly homes throughout the community: in individual residential care homes, staff and residents tested positive one after another and had to be arranged for isolation and quarantine. Working under extremely tight time pressures, the various “Community Geriatric Assessment Teams” did not shirk their duty and quietly took up the responsibility of community geriatric care. For instance, when the AsiaWorld-Expo was turned into a quarantine centre, team colleagues took turns to look after the residents who needed to be quarantined, without the least concern that those residents came from different communities and had medical histories we did not know. I believe that if the decision had not been made so resolutely at that moment and the quarantine measures not implemented in time to stamp out transmission, the number of casualties in the residential care homes would be unimaginable. To this day, although the pandemic is comparatively calm, the teams under our Hospital Authority still rotate in two-month shifts, quietly standing guard until the epidemic subsides.
There was also a time-limited arrangement to provide “BioNTech” vaccination services for residents of residential care homes and hostels for persons with disabilities across the whole territory. The specific arrangements included health assessments for the residents, arranging dedicated vehicles to travel to the vaccination centre to collect the vaccine, assessments of the hostel environment and first-aid equipment, and arranging the dates for the two doses — a whole series of troublesome procedures, all of which we were able to overcome one by one.
I believe that in future we will still have to “dance” with the COVID-19 epidemic for some time to come; it keeps mutating, which precisely tests human patience and our ability to adapt. Hong Kong is a land of blessing, and upholding the “Lion Rock Spirit” we too must keep renewing ourselves and growing stronger, guarding one another and each fulfilling our own role; where there is hope for tomorrow, we will surely “dance” out a more wonderful life.