【明報專訊】With the Hong Kong government's anti-epidemic system hugely overloaded by the spread of the pandemic, there are now bottlenecks in all processes from virus testing, the isolation of infected people and the treatment of patients. Although the city's virus testing capacity has been boosted recently to 200,000 or even 300,000 samples per day, it still cannot meet present needs. The government's rigid bureaucracy and poor dissemination of information have particularly made it hard for people to know what to do. Because of insufficient hospital beds and isolation facilities, thousands of infected people are in effect undergoing home isolation and self-treatment. A large number of people with mild symptoms have waited idly at home for many days. Their symptoms have appeared and disappeared, still they do not know if it is safe to end their self-isolation. The government was dilatory in announcing arrangements for people waiting to be admitted to hospitals or isolation facilities until yesterday (15 February), when it finally gave relatively clearer guidance on the matter. However, those infected people who have "waited so long that all symptoms have worn off" are still at a loss what to do. The government must properly handle the "aftereffects" of the bottlenecks in fighting the pandemic to alleviate the concerns of affected citizens.