The Hospital Authority (HA) announced on May 26 that the special visiting arrangement will be extended to other acute and specialist hospitals with inpatient services, and child and adolescent psychiatric wards or units from next Tuesday (May 31) (see Appendix).

For patients with high physical dependence, hospitals will contact relatives to offer early appointment if situations allowed. For child and adolescent psychiatric patients, the special visiting arrangement is applicable to patients below age of 18 and have been transferred out of observation areas. With the exception of patients staying in intensive care units, infectious disease or isolation wards, other psychiatric wards, and wards or cubicles admitting COVID-19 patients, one to two visits by one registered visitor will be arranged for each patient every week, with one hour duration for each visit. Hospital staff will contact relatives in the next few days for appointment. Relatives are not required to call the hospital for booking themselves. Please see the attachment for details of the requirements for the Vaccine Pass and COVID-19 testing.

All visitors entering public hospitals are required to comply with the infection control measures, such as wearing surgical masks, temperature checking and filling in health declaration forms. Visitors are advised to complete the health declaration form found in the HA webpage or the mobile app "HA Go" 24 hours before the visit and show the QR code generated by the system to ward staff. Moreover, visitors are also required to observe the requirements of "LeaveHomeSafe" venue QR code when entering public hospitals.

The HA hopes the patients’ family members can understand and comply with the visiting arrangements under the current epidemic situation. All hospitals will continue to facilitate compassionate and video visiting as far as practicable.