'Patients breached quarantine to see specialists'

'Patients breached quarantine to see specialists'

The government came under more fire over its ‘ineffective’ quarantine policy on Friday after Civic Party legislator Jeremy Tam complained that at least eight people who were supposed to isolate themselves at home went to a specialist outpatient clinic at the Ruttonjee Hospital over the past two days.



Tam said healthcare workers told him the patients apparently tried to conceal the fact that they had recently returned from mainland China, and were under a mandatory quarantine.



Doctors only found out their status after checking their records, but Tam said after they reported the issue to management, they decided not to notify the government because they didn’t know how to handle it, or out of privacy concerns.



“The hospital… should have procedures set by the health department to deal [with] situations like that rather than just let them go,” Tam said.



He noted that these people under quarantine had spent hours walking around the hospital, and may have put others at risk while they were out in public travelling to and from their appointments.



Tam said while people who violate the quarantine are committing a crime that can see them jailed for six months and fined HK$25,000, there’s no deterrent effect if no one is actually prosecuted.



“It’s about the enforcement”, he said. “The law is there, the penalties are there, but the government is probably reluctant to bring people to the court.”



At a press conference on Friday, a Hospital Authority official said she had no figures on hand as to many patients had broken their quarantine to seek treatment at public hospitals.



But chief manager Sara Ho said she ‘recommends’ people under quarantine to reschedule any appointments, or get friends or relatives to help pick up any prescribed drugs in their stead.



Ho also added that it's a criminal offence for people to give false information to doctors in public hospitals.



Since last Saturday, anyone who enters Hong Kong from the mainland is required to be quarantined for 14 days, as a measure against the coronavirus epidemic.



Residents are allowed to stay at homes, but a number have gone out without notifying the authorities. Two people were briefly put on a wanted list after police couldn’t track them down, but have not been prosecuted so far.