"We call it the fever zone," a nurse in full protective gear told AFP, declining to be named.

"Don't get too close."

Hong Kong is in the throes of the worst coronavirus outbreak in its history, recording new daily records of infections that have pushed hospitals to breaking point.

On Monday, the Caritas medical center in Sham Shui Po district began setting up isolation tents outside its premises, initially limited to one patient per tent.

But as night fell on Wednesday, entire families were crammed into tents, while around 50 others languished in the February chill in medical beds carried outside.

“Some of my colleagues say we are now in battlefield mode,” said David Chan, an emergency nurse at Caritas.

"We fear that the patients' conditions will worsen during the week," he added to AFP.

Later in the evening, the rain started to fall.

Like mainland China, Hong Kong adheres to the "zero covid" strategy, which has largely prevented the spread of the virus, but has isolated the business center from the rest of the world.

Until the current wave, all patients with Covid were treated in reserved isolation rooms and contact cases were sent to a quarantine camp.

But the Omicron variant revealed the shortcomings of the health strategy.

Before the latest wave, Hong Kong had recorded just over 12,000 cases since the start of the pandemic.

On Wednesday, the number of daily cases hit a record 4,285 confirmed infections in the densely populated city of 7.5 million people.

By March, Hong Kong could reach 30,000 daily cases, according to health experts.

A nurse walks through a temporary patient reception center outside the Caritas Medical Center in Hong Kong on February 16, 2022 Peter PARKS AFP

The elderly are particularly vulnerable: despite the abundance of stocks, only 43% of 70-79 year olds and 26% of those over 80 have chosen to be vaccinated.

Last week the government said people with mild infections could self-isolate at home, but as of Wednesday 12,000 people were still waiting to be hospitalized.

"No Plans"

At the Caritas hospital, staff are "exhausted, stressed and helpless" in the face of the onslaught of patients, Mr Chan said.

Even working "non-stop," he says, "we still can't properly attend to all patients."

The current crisis exceeds the one they faced at the start of the pandemic, he adds.

"At the time, we didn't know the virus well and we lacked the material. Two years later, we expected the hospital authority to have better plans, but it turned out that he didn't. there was none."

Leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday ruled out strict containment.

But the next day, Beijing-controlled newspapers published an order from President Xi Jinping asking authorities to take "all necessary measures" to control the outbreak.

a woman carrying her child speaks with a doctor before spending the night outside the Caritas Medical Center in Hong Kong on February 16, 2022 Peter PARKS AFP

The government has opened temporary clinics and plans to build a giant makeshift hospital.

It also plans to requisition 3,000 unoccupied social housing apartments and is studying the possibility of using hotels.

But it remains to be seen whether these measures will be taken in time.

"I kept calling the emergency numbers, but none worked," Chau, who was waiting with her feverish two-year-old child in the Caritas parking lot, told AFP.

When she joined the approximately 120 people waiting outside the establishment two hours earlier, the nurses asked her to be tested, a process of several hours.

Healthcare professionals have long warned that public hospitals in Hong Kong are underfunded and ill-prepared for a coronavirus outbreak.

Even in previous flu outbreaks, hospitals had “gave in,” Siddharth Sridhar, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said in a tweet on Wednesday.

"Now, with a disease that is more communicable and more severe than the flu, and which requires exposed staff to be quarantined, hospitals in Hong Kong are sand castles in the midst of a tsunami," he said. he declares.

© 2022 AFP