Lam Foon, 98, sits propped up and swaddled in soggy woollen blankets in a hospital bed just outside the entrance to Hong Kong's Caritas Medical Centre, waiting for tests to confirm her preliminary positive result for COVID-19.
"I don't feel so good," she told Reuters through a surgical mask, next to a similarly wrapped patient wearing a mask and face shield.
In the cluster of working-class districts in nearby Sham Shui Po, some residential blocks and public housing estates have been sealed off, crowds in malls and street markets have thinned, and once teeming diners known as dai pai dongs and stalls selling knick-knacks are quieter after dark. Hong Kong authorities on Thursday apologised for the dire situation at hospitals serving the city of 7.4 million.
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