Elderly travellers should be allowed to isolate at home if certain conditions are met, a leading health expert has said, after the death of an 87-year-old veteran Hong Kong actor at a quarantine hotel sparked calls for a policy review.
The family of actor Kenneth Tsang Kong, whose death prompted citywide mourning, declined to comment on Thursday morning on whether he had been given timely medical help in the hotel.
“Not many things the hotel could do, or we could imagine ... there could be a lot of emergencies everyone needs to respond to,” the actor’s daughter Musette Tsang said after identifying his body at a public mortuary in Kwai Chung. “We don’t need to make too many comments.”
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The celebrated actor was found dead in his room in the Kowloon Hotel on Nathan Road on Wednesday while undergoing quarantine after a trip to Singapore. He had tested negative for Covid-19 and had received three doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, sources said.
His ex-wife reportedly said he had asked his family for medicine and food the day before he died.
It was also reported that the hotel had asked the family to get approval from the Department of Health to open the room door to check on Tsang, despite the authorities later saying prior permission was not needed in an emergency.
The family sent medicine to the hotel but it is uncertain if it was delivered to Tsang. The Post has contacted the hotel and Food and Health Bureau for confirmation and comments.
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Musette Tsang said she had been in close contact with her father in the last few days, and talked about his trip and food. She added that her father had high blood pressure but she considered it normal at his age.
“It has already happened. It is more important for our family to let it sink in and process this ... We are still discussing his funeral arrangements but we prefer to be low profile.”
She thanked the public for caring about her father.
“I hope that he delivered great performances and stories to you all and people will remember him as being young, handsome and excellent at acting,” she said.
“He loved having fun and eating different food. He really enjoyed his life. I hope people will remember this side of him.”
Health expert Dr Ho Pak-leung, a leading microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said elderly people with pre-existing conditions could die during medical emergencies such as heart attack or stroke if no one was there to provide immediate help.
“If no one is able to provide medicine or dial 999 for the elderly, the victim may not be saved within the ‘golden hour’ and unfortunate events may happen,” he told a radio programme. “Whether Tsang was in this situation, the authorities can further investigate.”
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Ho said the government could consider allowing those with special needs to quarantine at home.
“If [travellers] fit certain criteria or have certain needs, they can quarantine at home,” he said. “Two years ago [when home quarantine was allowed], we did not have enough weapons to fight the virus. But we now have adequate measures to deal with outbreaks.”
Ho said Hong Kong was “out of touch” in terms of quarantine policies compared with other places around the world where compulsory requirements had been lifted.
He added that Hong Kong could learn from places such as Singapore, which requires people under home quarantine to report their location through an app.
However, Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, a government pandemic adviser, said home quarantine should not be allowed in general.
“Home quarantine will bring variants into the community. The risk is even higher. We cannot loosen [the policy] just for convenience ... The Cathay Pacific aircrew lesson must be learned,” Hui said, referring to incidents where Omicron-carrying airline staff who were home-quarantining spread the virus at the start of the fifth wave of cases in late December.
He said most flats were not suitable for home quarantine due to the lack of separate rooms and toilets. But if necessary, it could be made possible for people to quarantine at home when the residential conditions allowed and if their whereabouts were monitored with an electronic device.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Food and Health Bureau said quarantine hotel staff could enter people’s rooms without prior approval from government departments for safety reasons or emergencies.
The bureau added that hotel staff had to wear personal protective equipment when entering rooms and notify relevant government authorities afterwards.
The bureau said it had emphasised to quarantine hotels that the reasonableness of requests should be considered with common sense and the needs of those isolating should be taken into account. It also reminded hotels to provide appropriate help, such as transferring medicines, to those under quarantine.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Five memorable screen roles of Kenneth Tsang Kong, always the bad guy except when he was selling Bigen hair dye
- Tributes pour in for Hong Kong actor Kenneth Tsang, a ‘good brother’ and stalwart of local entertainment scene
- Coronavirus Hong Kong: give elderly in care homes BioNTech vaccine instead of Sinovac to better protect them, patients’ concern group says
- Coronavirus: Hong Kong’s infected elderly residents isolating alone at home feel ‘hopeless’ with little family or community support
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