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The 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 session this afternoon (March 16):
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: As you know Dr Ko has updated you on the position today that there are now having 49 patients whom we are keeping under observation and that 42 individuals now have pneumonia. Yesterday's number was there were 37 with pneumonia and now we have 42. And all the patients with pneumonia are in Prince of Wales Hospital. So, as we expected, as time goes on we have expected that some of the individuals that we have kept under observation will develop pneumonia. These are the numbers that we have. We have four individuals who are in intensive care. They are in quite serious condition, one in very serious condition. On the other side, we also have some patients, some health care workers, who were admitted in Kwong Wah Hospital, who have recovered. They had very serious pneumonia. They are the two patients in Kwong Wah with serious pneumonia and they have both recovered. And one is, in fact, scheduled for discharge from hospital next week. So there is good news and bad news. We have some effective treatment but the treatment is not 100 per cent. I just want to reassure the public that we are doing all we can and to our colleagues in our hospital field that the hospitals are geared up to provide the best treatment. Obviously, since we don't know what exactly the agent is, we cannot say that there is going to be a cure. There is certainly effective treatment but it is not going to be absolute. The other thing I want to talk about is the World Health Organisation alert and the new case definition. We are certainly very grateful to the World Health Organisation for responding so quickly. We need a good case definition so that we can understand more about this very unusual phenomenon. But the new case definition that the World Health Organisation has put forward is a very broad one. There are good points about this because if you have a very broad definition, then you cast your net much wider. But then, the down side is that you are casting it so wide, you are including a lot of things that may not be relevant to this outbreak. So, I think we'll need to have clarification from the World Health Organisation. They say that if a person with very serious respiratory symptoms, who has been in contact with another person with the same symptoms, then, this is a case definition. But then, this will include a lot of background atypical pneumonia. Atypical pneumonia is caused by a whole variety of organisms, like influenza and other viruses. We have also got other atypical pneumonia. Atypical pneumonia can be caused by organisms, such as mycoplasma and mycoplasma is very infectious. So you would include a lot of these cases in the net. The other thing that we are a bit concerned about is the geographical reference to the regions where people have traveled. As people are more and more aware of these cases, you'll find that you have more and more cases diagnosed all over the world. Because if you have a very broad case definition, you can image that there will be many more cases all over the world.
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: Nobody at the moment knows whether these cases are similar or not. So we'll certainly look forward to the World Health Organisation to do the co-ordination, to really come up with some comparisons to see which are the cases that are the ones that we are interested in and concerned about, and which are the ones that we are not. We need to have more precise definitions and co-ordination from the World Health Organisation. The reference to countries, I think, is problematic because when you have history of people first reported ill in a particular country or area, it doesn't mean the disease originated from that area or country. And the best example of this is the West Nile virus infection occurred in New York about three years ago. The cases were reported in New York where they had this unusual virus that killed scores of people. After months of investigation, eventually they found that the virus was the West Nile virus which, obviously as the name implies, did not come from the States. It originated in the West Nile area. But because that virus was brought into America, and then, because there was no immunity in the American population, it spread very quickly and caused very severe disease and deaths. So I think we need to have these clarifications; otherwise, there'll be a lot of worries for international travellers. As far as we are concerned, Hong Kong is still a safe place to come to. You are not more likely to get pneumonia coming to Hong Kong than any other cities. Obviously, we are very cautious about this statement because we need to understand much more about this very unusual phenomenon. We are going to work very closely with the World Health Organisation and with other national authorities dealing with this problem. And we'll be very open. If there is any risk, we will inform the public.
(Please also refer to the Chinese
portion)
Sunday, March 16, 2003
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