Press Releases

SFH on seasonal influenza

Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan, after attending a public function today (July 22):

Reporter: ....... hospital wards with the outbreak of influenza A. What would the Hospital Authority (HA) do to control such outbreak?

Secretary for Food and Health: Actually the Hospital Authority has done a lot of short term measures to deal with this summer surge of flu season. One of the measures is using some of the private hospital beds of St Teresa Hospital. Another measure is to increase the number of medical and healthcare staff, using some part-time and special honorarium scheme for people already working in the hospitals. Another measure is to delay some of the non-urgent procedures in the hospitals to allow more beds to cater for the additional number of admission. The HA will continue to monitor the situation and the increased service demand.

Reporter: There has been some reports saying that hospital wards had outbreak of influenza A, for example, the Caritas Medical Centre. How would HA do to control such outbreak within wards?

Secretary for Food and Health: Infection control measures are very important in the hospitals or within the wards. Therefore, the HA really focusses on different infection control measures such as hand hygiene or other hygiene measures within the clinical wards so that people admitted to hospitals could be shielded from some of the infections around them.

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

Ends/Saturday, July 22, 2017
Issued at HKT 17:14
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