People wear facemasks as a precautionary measure against coronavirus infection, as they walk near the check in counters at Hong Kong International Airport on March 24, 2020. (ANTHONY WALLACE / AFP)

HONG KONG – The city on Sunday recorded 59 new cases of novel coronavirus infection, pushing the total to 641. 

The number of new cases was only slightly below the highest single-day record of 65, recorded on Friday. Health authorities reported 64 news cases the following day. 

Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Communicable Disease Branch of the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health, urged the public to stay at home and avoid nonessential outing. 

The next two weeks are critical in the city’s push to slow down the transmission of the disease in the community, she stressed.

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The high daily number of new infections recorded in each of the past few days could lead to a shortage of beds in hospitals’ isolation wards. At this rate of increase, all available isolation beds will soon be occupied even with the addition of 400 beds next week, said Sara Ho, Hospital Authority Chief Manager (Patient Safety and Risk Management).

Forty of the new cases confirmed Sunday, including 18 students returning from the US and the UK, had traveled overseas during the incubation period

There are 1,012 isolation beds in the city, 62 percent of which are now occupied, an increase of 10 percent from a few days ago, according to health authorities. 

Six more patients were discharged from hospital, raising the total number of recoveries to 118. 

The 30 men and 29 women confirmed on Sunday to have been contracted the disease are aged between 11 and 77. Forty of them had traveled overseas during incubation period, including 18 students returning from the United States and the United Kingdom.

Among the 19 patients without recent travel history, 7 were traced to the bars cluster, the city’s biggest local cluster.

So far, infection of 62 confirmed patients was traced to bars in Lan Kwai Fong, Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui.

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The government couldn’t trace the source of infections of six patients during the initial investigations. Some of them were later found to have visited several bars, though different from those identified in the bars cluster.  

Some of the newly confirmed patients, who were under quarantine when informed of their test results, need to wait a day before being picked up by the government to hospitals for treatment, said Ho.

The government has been discussing with medical experts to see whether it’s feasible to transfer patients, who have almost recovered, from isolation wards to transformed ordinary wards, which are equipped with the same type of isolation facilities, she said.

Although there are 1,012 isolation beds, 66 of them are in the intensive care unit and 122 for children, leaving only 824 of such beds for adult patients, she pointed out.

Saying that the authorities are concerned about possible shortage of isolation beds and has been working on ways to make more such beds available for COVID-19 patients, Ho called on people to stay at home and maintain social distancing.