Hong Kong reports virus death as workers strike at hospitals

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By KEN MORITSUGU

BEIJING (AP) — Hong Kong hospitals cut services as thousands of medical workers went on strike for a second day Tuesday to demand the border with mainland China be shut completely. The new virus caused its first death in the semi-autonomous territory, adding to growing fears it is spreading locally.

All but two of Hong Kong’s land and sea crossings with the mainland were closed at midnight after thousands of hospital workers went on strike Monday. Hong Kong health authorities reported two additional patients without any known travel to the virus epicenter, bringing the number of locally transmitted cases to four.

The growing caseload “indicates significant risk of community transmission” and could portend a “large-scale” outbreak, said Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the communicable disease branch at the Center for Health Protection.

More than 7,000 health workers joined the strike Tuesday, according to the Hospital Authority Employees’ Alliance, the strike organizer.



Workers arrange beds in a convention center that has been converted into a temporary hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020. China said Tuesday the number of infections from a new virus surpassed 20,000 as medical workers and patients arrived at a new hospital and President Xi Jinping said "we have launched a people's war of prevention of the epidemic." (Chinatopix via AP)


Read more: https://apnews.com/d2d45764cebc6baecb1f3a5f51ccbf1d

[Warpy]

1. A friend there put the number at 9000 per their local news

and said transit workers and civil servants wee rumbling about striking.

I'll believe there's a people's war against infection when my friend tells me there is finally a campaign to get people to cough and sneeze in the crooks of their elbows, the only way to prevent aerosol droplets from escaping. Right now, it's just hot air, possibly contaminated.