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Following is a transcript of the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a stand-up briefing at Central Government Offices today (March 14):
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I just want to, before we give it the details, clarify a number of things. First, to thank the media yesterday for reporting the information to the public so that they have much more information relating to the current situation. But I also noted from the reports there was a lot of misunderstandings about this atypical pneumonia. And a lot of confusions saying that there are outbreaks of atypical pneumonia. People said that you come to Hong Kong you get pneumonia and you go back to your respective country etc. I just want to explain that in any country and any area, there is always cases of pneumonia. This is, you see it whether it is in Hong Kong, yee see it in United States, in Britain, in the Philippines, in Singapore, in China, everywhere. So, you have pneumonias occurring on a day-to-day basis. And the experience of most communities where you have good surveillance system is that pneumonias in the background is about 50 per cent is usually from your retrospective studies due to bacteria. Of course, bacteria pneumonias are usually easier to treat although they are not always curable, but they are much easier to treat with antibiotics. And usually patients responded well unless they have predisposed causes, cancer or other deficiencies. The other half of the patients who have pneumonia usually includes a large group of patients with atypical pneumonia. Atypical pneumonia is usually caused by viral agents such as influenza and other respiratory syncytial viruses. It is also caused by some other organisms such as legionella. But those are usually in Hong Kong quite rare. For most atypical pneumonia in Hong Kong, they are usually due to viruses. And the known viruses, the most common of all, is the influenza virus and the adenovirus. You have two whole host of other atypical pneumonia. So, in Hong Kong, every month we have 1,500 to 2,000 cases of pneumonia and about half we can identify the bacteria and the other half usually we can't. Usually, these are due to viruses or partly treated pneumonias. The pattern has not changed and our experience is very similar to those other developed countries. So we are not talking about any outbreaks in the community. And that is why when yesterday we are talking about particularly looking at a particular group. We are not saying that infection is [not] going to occur in the community, that it doesn't go into the community. So, there is lots of misunderstanding people talk about air-borne diseases. What we are saying that is that all these community pneumonias seem to have a subset which is very very particular that it does appear to predisposition affect health care professionals that care for these patients and also very close family contacts. So there is a predisposition and predilection to affect health care workers and close family members. From the information we have, it appears that it is compatible with the viral infection. So all the evidence we have point to the fact that this is a viral infection which is transmitted by droplets. It is purely based on intelligence on information that we have. So, what we are looking at is whether this particular subset of atypical pneumonia that seems to be so different in their behaviour is due to either a new virus or one of the existing virus that we know of but behaving in a different way or there is something in the environment that have been changing them. So, this is the area that we are putting our attention on. So, in Hong Kong, there are four possible clusters of incidents that we are looking at. The first is the one in Prince of Wales Hospital where there are a large group of health care professionals who are affected. The second is not a group but individual, the patient that was transferred from Hanoi to Hong Kong and died in Princess Margaret Hospital but fortunately because we are aware of the problem, precautions were taken and no outbreak occurred in staff but the outbreak occurred in Hanoi. The third group of individuals that we are looking at are those in the more recent report yesterday. Yesterday was two, today have five staff in Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital. The fourth possible group that we are looking at is what was reported yesterday by a private doctor where he was reported to have seen a patient and he came down with pneumonia and also three of his nursing staff in the clinic. So, that group we are also interested because from the history it appeared that the doctor also took care of a patient with pneumonia. So, these are the four clusters of patients of health care staff that we are currently investigating to see whether we can find a common cause for them. So, this is the current situation. To date, the information is that there are 43 staff who had been admitted to public hospitals and put under observation. These are patients, usually staff who have symptoms of fever, etc. Of these 43, 29 had signs of pneumonia. So this is the present update. The details Dr Ko will give you in details in terms of which hospital, which are being observed of pneumonia.
Reporter: Did the Government plan to pre-warn...?
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I think for the actual arrangements, I'll leave Dr Ko to answer. Also I think in terms of family members, there are certain family members in the previous cases that were admitted, Dr Ko can give the details of the information.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)
End/Friday, March 14, 2003
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