The United States warned citizens against travelling to Hong Kong on Wednesday, citing the risk of children being separated from parents as the Chinese city imposes controversial coronavirus isolation policies.

The State Department upgraded Hong Kong to its highest "Do Not Travel" warning "due to COVID-19 related restrictions, including the risk of parents and children being separated".

"In some cases, children in Hong Kong who test positive have been separated from their parents and kept in isolation until they meet local hospital discharge requirements," the State Department added.

The Asian financial hub is in the grip of its worst coronavirus outbreak, registering tens of thousands of new cases each day, overwhelming hospitals and shattering the city's zero-Covid strategy.

China has ordered local officials to stamp out the outbreak even as studies estimate as many as a quarter of the city's residents may have been infected in the current wave.

Authorities plan to test all 7.4 million residents later this month and are scrambling to build a network of isolation camps and temporary hospitals, with China's help, to house the infected.

"It remains our policy objective to subject all confirmed people to isolation at places other than their places of accommodation so as not to infect others," city leader Carrie Lam wrote in a progress report this week.

That has deepened anxieties about family separations in the months ahead and the warning by the United States is the first time the risk has been specifically cited in a travel advisory.

- Spiralling infections -

More than 280,000 infections have been recorded in the past two months, compared with just 12,000 for the rest of the pandemic -- while Hong Kong's death rate is currently four times that of Singapore.

Wednesday saw a record official tally of 55,353 cases and 117 deaths, the first time the daily fatality rate has hit three figures.

The real infection rate is believed to be far higher in part because residents are worried about coming forward.

For two years Hong Kong kept infections largely at bay using a strict zero-Covid strategy, but an outbreak of the highly infectious Omicron variant has torn through the city since January.

The government was caught flat-footed, with few plans in place to deal with a mass outbreak despite the two-year breathing room afforded by the initial zero-Covid success.

The city has since seen overflowing hospitals and morgues, shortages of medics and ambulances, panic buying and a frantic expansion of the city's spartan quarantine camp system.

The vast majority of those dying are over 70 and unvaccinated after Hong Kong failed to raise its elderly vaccination rate despite ample supplies.

On Wednesday, officials said some 500 bodies would need to be stored temporarily in refrigerated truck containers.

- UK, Australia fears -

Departures by foreign residents have spiked while businesses have voiced growing frustration over the city's descent into further international isolation as well as repeated government policy u-turns.

The outbreak has led to the imposition of the toughest restrictions yet, with more than a dozen types of businesses ordered to close and a ban on more than two people gathering in public.

Hong Kong health authorities have defended the policy of separating sick children from their uninfected parents, saying that rapidly filling hospital spaces should be reserved for patients.

Diplomats from Britain and Australia have previously voiced concern about separations.

The United States, Britain and Australia are on a list of nine nations currently forbidden from flying to Hong Kong until late April because of their own coronavirus infections.

Details are currently scant on how this month's mass testing will work and where the infected will be housed.

About 70,000 isolation units for mild cases are due to come online in the coming weeks, in requisitioned hotels, public housing units and camps.

At Hong Kong's current official caseload, that would cover less than two days' worth of new infections.

Lam on Wednesday said there will not be enough beds to isolate all infections but did not give further details.

She also said there would be no "citywide lockdown" though some measures would be in place "limiting people from going out" during testing.

The government has said it is still "refining" its testing plan and has urged residents not to panic, adding food supplies remain stable.

Several local health experts have publicly called for mass testing to be delayed given infections are set to peak at some 180,000 a day later this month.

Disarray grips Hong Kong ahead of mass Covid testing, isolation
Hong Kong (AFP) March 2, 2022 - Overflowing hospitals, empty supermarket shelves and grim quarantine camps -- Hong Kong is in chaos battling a ballooning Covid outbreak in a business hub once renowned for its efficiency.

Many locals are fuming at the government's failure to prepare after winning rare breathing room with two years of an economically painful but largely successful zero-Covid strategy.

Other countries that deployed zero-Covid such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are now learning to live with the virus, but China remains committed to stamping it out and has ordered Hong Kong to do the same.

The financial centre is now preparing to test its entire 7.4 million population and isolate everybody infected as it clings to the policy even as cases spiral out of control.

Morgues are running full, ambulances are in short supply and patients are enduring long spells in basic quarantine facilities isolated from loved ones.

Emily, a 40-year-old mother of two, is convinced her family became infected when they spent hours in queues for two rounds of compulsory tests last month after a case was discovered in their building.

The results took 10 days and showed that all except the youngest child were negative. But by that point, the whole family were displaying symptoms.

"I never thought I would harm my dearest when I was merely trying to cooperate with the government," she told AFP, asking to use just her first name.

"It's traumatic."

- Test and isolate -

Hong Kong is now embarking on an audacious mass testing and isolation plan despite registering 190,000 infections in the last two months.

That is more than three times the number recorded in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in 2020 and was only brought under control by confining millions to their homes for weeks.

The Omicron variant pummelling Hong Kong is also far more infectious but Chinese officials nonetheless appear adamant they can succeed.

Liang Wannian, one of the key architects of China's lockdown strategy, arrived in Hong Kong on Monday as the city's health chief revealed Hong Kongers may be confined to their homes for part or all of the mass testing period.

That revelation has prompted panic-buying in the last two days.

Few details have emerged about what authorities will do with tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of cases uncovered by mass testing.

But city leader Carrie Lam has said they do not want people recovering at home.

About 70,000 isolation units are due to come online in the coming weeks, some in requisitioned hotels and public housing blocks, others in hastily erected camps being built with Chinese help.

Local experts however warn that the facilities are still a fraction of what is needed.

"If we do not have a plan on how to quarantine the confirmed cases, then mass testing will not be useful at all," pandemic adviser Ivan Hung told reporters this week.

- 'Very scary' -

Those who have spent time in the quarantine camps say conditions are grim and chaotic.

"You can call it a concentration camp instead of a quarantine camp," Samuel Ho, an IT professional who spent a week at the Penny's Bay facility on the outlying Lantau Island, told AFP.

Ho, asking to use a pseudonym, said he was given no instructions for his first two days and his only contact with the outside world was the cold meals placed outside his cabin.

He said calls to a government health line he was meant to report to often went unanswered.

"It was very chaotic, very scary and it could easily crash one's mind," Ho said.

"All the government's arrangements have rendered Hong Kong an unlivable place."

Last week detainees at the same camp held a protest accusing authorities of keeping them beyond their discharge days.

Cyan, 25, was held at a different camp last month on Hong Kong Island alongside her grandmother and younger sister.

"The whole thing feels unreasonable and meaningless," Cyan said, adding they felt they could take better care of themselves at home.

"I am wasting public resources when others in more urgent need cannot get any."

Both Hung and Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, have called for the mass testing to be postponed to build enough units to isolate all cases and their contacts.

Hung is opposed to a lockdown and said energy would be better spent getting Hong Kong's dangerously under-vaccinated elderly population inoculated.

Cowling told AFP a short lockdown could "slow down transmission".

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