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The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong said today (March 18) the number of a unique variety of atypical pneumonia patients in Hong Kong totalled 111.
A further 12 people were being kept under observation, bringing to 123 Hong Kong's total number of confirmed and suspected cases.
In all, 67 medical staff had been admitted, 55 with pneumonia symptoms, along with 17 medical students, all of whom had pneumonia symptoms, and 39 other people who had been in close contact with the patients and who also all had the symptoms.
He told a press conference in Murray Building that he included even those at present under observation in order to show that the government was being completely open about the situation.
Dr Yeoh also stressed that the disease was being spread by droplets, not by transmission in the air as some had suggested.
This meant people had to be in close contact with a patient in order to contract the disease, he said.
He was supported at the press conference by Dr William Ho, Chief Executive of the Hospital Authority, Professor K Y Yuen, from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, Professor John Tam Siu-lun, from the Department of Microbiology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Dr Dominic N C Tsang, a member of the Hospital Authority Central Committee on Infection Control.
Dr Yeoh said the Prince of Wales Hospital had the great majority of these cases because the infection spread to health care workers, other patients, relatives and visitors who came in close contact before it was realised the "index" patient was infectious.
Prof Tam suspected that some early cases were probably related to the "index" patient being treated with a nebuliser for his respiratory symptoms which could induce an aerosol, a method that allowed droplets to spread easily.
He said researchers believed they had identified an "index" patient who arrived at the Prince of Wales Hospital who contracted the disease on February 24 and was admitted to the hospital's Ward 8A on March 5.
Health care workers in the ward began to come down with a respiratory illness from March 7, all of them had come into close contact with the patient in Ward 8A.
Dr Ho said the Accident and Emergency Ward at Prince of Wales Hospital would be closed for three days because many of the medical staff had reported sick and it was difficult to operate the service with the remaining manpower, and urgent patients would be taken to the nearest alternative hospital.
Dr Tsang said that the number of "background" atypical pneumonia cases should be seen against the number that occurred each month, especially during winter, in the preceding year.
There was no increase in the number of these cases this year, he said.
End/Tuesday, March 18, 2003
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