Collective ordeal

Leung Wing-hung, chairman of the Hong Kong Special Schools Council, said the situation at Hong Chi Pinehill No 2 School is repeated in local schools. The council is a local organization representing all of the city's special schools.

According to him, all the dormitory departments of the city's over 20 special schools with residential service accommodate students amid the pandemic at various degrees. Some set for severe intellectual disability children retained 70 to 80 percent students of their tally, while the rest also maintained 20 to 30 percent.

Leung added besides the shortages of staff and protective gear, which are shared by all special schools, some of them still face extra challenges.

During saner times, most students at residential schools went home on weekends and spent the Spring Festival holiday with their families. Some left the city during this year's Spring Festival. That means the schools had to implement additional quarantine measures after the holidays.

Some schools were affected by the government's border control restrictions, which are meant to contain the pandemic. Since Feb 8, everyone entering Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland is required to stay at home under a mandatory, 14-day quarantine. Some students never got back after the holidays because their families live on the mainland, and are forced to remain there.

That presents a special problem. Some of them need medicines that are hard to get on the mainland. Express companies refuse to handle cross-boundary delivery of medicines. The schools have had to depend on parents who need to go to the mainland, or cross-boundary truck drivers, to deliver medicines to students in need, Leung said.