To reduce the potential pressure on public hospitals from COVID-19 and hospital admissions, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Hong Kong has launched “Virtual Doctor,” which started on July 11. The service provides free consultation, medicine, and delivery to patients who are 18 or above with symptoms or those tested positive with mild symptoms so that patients can get medical advice quickly.
After the consultation, the delivery address is confirmed by staff, and couriers deliver medicine on the same day or the following day. Therefore, patients do not have to travel for consultation.
The Hospital Authority (HA) of Hong Kong is piloting the virtual medical consultation service for patients using the “telemedicine support service” in QEH to provide consultations to patients currently in Hong Kong.
Dr. Chan Wan-kin, general administrative manager of HA, said that they would provide 100 consultation appointments in the first week of the launch, and the number of appointments will gradually increase. As of 5 p.m. on July 15, more than 20 patients, aged 20 to 82, used the service, and over half of them had been prescribed oral antiviral medicine.
To cope with the future development of the pandemic, HA will consider strengthening the services and its responses, such as extending the services to other hospitals, increasing the quotas, expanding the types of services to the patients, and recruiting doctors from the private sector for more manpower.
Although the recent number of hospital admissions increased from 500 to 1,000, the number of severe cases and deaths are low and mostly confined to people with chronic conditions, as noted in a recent article by Hong Kong University Professors Yuen Kwok-yung and Ivan Hung Fan-ngai.
The article also pointed out that oral antiviral medications are available in Hong Kong and can be used to treat early infection of COVID-19 and prevent them from becoming severe cases.
“Molnupiravir” and “Paxlovid” are the two types of oral antiviral medicine used in Hong Kong.
The service operates from Monday to Sunday. The consultation hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday, and the medicine prescribed before 2 p.m. will be delivered on the same day. At the same time, the rest will be delivered no later than the afternoon following the consultation day.
The service operates from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday and public holidays, and the medicine will be delivered on the same day.
