Hong Kong’s public hospitals are already overburdened in the flu season.,Medical workers fear it could worsen after health authorities widened the internet for suspected cases of Wuhan pneumonia outbreak.

A representative of a health care workers’ union said increasing the employee turnover for hospital beds might be among the solutions to tackle the matter, while a doctor urged local authorities to intensify surveillance by introducing health declaration forms for passengers arriving on flights from Wuhan, which announced its second death of the outbreak on Thursday night.

At least 41 people are struck down in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province, with pneumonia caused by a replacement coronavirus, in an epidemic linked to a seafood market within the city.

Japan on Thursday confirmed its first case of the disease and Thailand its other on Friday.

Dr. Arisina Ma Chung-yee, president of the general public Doctors’ Association, said: “If those that visited a hospital on the mainland also will be considered, it's likely the number of suspected cases will much increase.”

She said that unlike in Hong Kong where patients with common ailments like the cold or flu would attend a clinic, those seeking assistance on the mainland were more likely to go to a hospital’s outpatient department and tend intravenous fluids for even minor issues.

Hong Kong’s public hospitals were already full because the city entered the height flu season last week. Statistics on Thursday showed the general percentage for beds was 105 percent.

Between noon on Thursday and noon on Friday, three more suspected cases of the Wuhan pneumonia were reported to Hong Kong health authorities and isolated publicly hospitals, bringing the entire to 81 since New Year's Eve. Among them, 75 have already been discharged.

Lau Hoi-man, of the Hong Kong Allied Health Professionals and Nurses Association, echoed the concerns overseeing more patients under the expanded criteria.

He said a possible thanks to handling the additional number of patients was to hurry up bed turnover rates.

“Perhaps patients who haven't yet recovered will get to be discharged or sent to a rehabilitation hospital … so beds are often freed up for brand spanking new patients,” Lau said.

Ma said it might be difficult to use holiday camps for quarantine – as occurred during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2003 – as suspected cases, this point had a fever and respiratory symptoms that required medical aid.

Dr. Ho Pak-leung from the University of Hong Kong said that the authorities had no choice but to expand the screening net, given the disease’s development.

“There may be a got to strengthen screening and thus the internet has got to be bigger,” he said. “There might be quite one source of infection.”