Press Releases

SFH on human swine flu

< Back

Following is the transcript (English portion) of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session after attending a radio programme today (June 24):

Reporter: Is swine flu entrenched as seasonal flu? What sorts of actions would the Government take? Would you drop all the mitigation measures?

Secretary for Food and Health: I think mitigation is still very important, particularly when we are facing a new influenza virus. As you can see from various experiences in North American countries, this virus is going to last for some time. Although it is replacing slowly the so-called seasonal flu H1N1 Brisbane strain and is already doing that in Hong Kong, but I think the fact is most people do not have the antibody for this virus. So, we can see that the transmission and also the spread of the influenza would be continuing for some time. Our aim for mitigation is to try to ensure that there is no large massive outbreak within a very short time because that would cause a lot of burden on the healthcare facilities and also cause panic in the society at the same time. So, this is something we try to avoid. All the measures we are taking right now is to try to slow down this epidemic and try to reduce the number of cases although we cannot prevent them. So, this is important. The second principle is to ensure that those people who are at risk are being protected and that is why we have a lot of guidelines for schools, for young children, for people with chronic illnesses and also for the elderly. This is something that I think is very important because once we see people coming down with flu and complications and require intensive care or maybe people who die from it, I am sure the sentiment would be very different from what it is now. We cannot really be complacent about this influenza although we allow people to have as much normal activities as possible. I think we still need to care for those people who are at risk.

Reporter: (Playgroups)

Secretary for Food and Health: We have actually set up all the guidelines for such activities on the website of the Centre for Health Protection. There are guidelines for organisers and for participants. For the organisers, we feel that depends on what type of environment they have; we hope that first of all, the group activity should not be big group and should not result in overcrowding. Secondly, you make sure that those children who are sick would stay home and do not come for those activities. This is very important. While they are there, they are well looked after. They need to regularly wash their hands and make sure they have good hygienic practices and so on. We believe that such activities are essential for children but it is important that we have enough precautions to ensure that would not become a centre of outbreak.

Reporter: When are we going to move to full mitigation? Are you going to base it on the number of infections or the severity of cases?

Secretary for Food and Health: In fact, if you look at the transmission model, we are already in the middle of the mitigation phase right now. As you know that, I think as of today, 99 countries in the world have reported cases. In other words, the border controls are no longer really functioning that well for many countries because they all have endemic cases, that are indigenous cases. So, I think the same would go for Hong Kong very soon although we are not actually dropping the border control but we feel that our battlefront is actually at our clinics and also our hospitals. More importantly, it is actually with our citizens and our families, they need to take precautions themselves to ensure those people at risk are not exposed to this virus as much as they can. So, if you have a family member that has a chronic illness, I would suggest that you try every means to protect them.

Reporter: (inaudible)

Secretary for Food and Health: Hong Kong would not drop our reporting system just like that. I think we take pride in being very transparent and being a very responsible community here. So if we have so many cases, we have to report it. It is important for the community to know about the trend. It is also important for them to know if somebody is seriously ill or even die from it. We are not going to drop the reporting system for the time being.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)



Ends/Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Issued at HKT 15:03

NNNN

12 Apr 2019