*****************************************
Obviously the Department of Health is continuing to do its surveillance work and we have found no features at the moment that suggest any spread in the community. The Hospital Authority is continuing its infection control procedures in the hospitals to limit the numbers from increasing in each cluster. We are looking at a variety of measures. The first thing is, if you have a suspected case, then you want to make sure that you identify the context. And then if the people are sick, you take care of them so that (the diseases) don't spread to other part of the community. So the limit to spread is one cluster. The other infection control procedure the Hospital Authority is doing is that there may be one or two individuals in the community that may carry the virus we don't know. Obviously we need to take measures so that when health care personnel are dealing with very sick patients with atypical pneumonia, if there are cases started in the community, we minimise the chances of getting another cluster. So this is what we are looking at. We are looking at infection control procedures and surveillance system. First is to make sure that if there is a cluster, we minimise the number that will grow from them. The second is to minimise other chances of other clusters developing. And the third, in the overall community, to make sure that there is no spread of infection in the community. So this is the work the Hospital Authority and the Department of Health are doing.
I also want to say in fact there have been some reports from countries in the region to warn their citizens not to come to Hong Kong because of atypical pneumonia. We have in fact through the tourism departments inform the consul generals, to tell them the situation because we believe that with the right information, people will not be scared, and will not take unnecessary action not to come to Hong Kong because Hong Kong is actually safe at the moment. It is no different from going to any big cities in the world because there is certainly no evidence to say Hong Kong has an outbreak of atypical pneumonia in the community. What we see is a very special situation of clusters of atypical pneumonia in health care personnel taking care of patients with atypical pneumonia and some clusters include the relatives of these individuals.
(to be continued)
End/Saturday, March 15, 2003
NNNN
