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The following is the transcript of the Secretary for Health Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at the press briefing on atypical pneumonia this afternoon (March 20):
Dr Yeoh: In total there are now 165 patients with pneumonia. The corresponding figure yesterday was 145, so there's an increase of 20 cases. In addition we also have eight individuals who are under observation. Yesterday that corresponding figure was five. So in total, we now have a 173. The total figure yesterday was 150.
The main increases today have been in patients and their relatives. So there are still some healthcare workers that have come down with the infection, but the numbers are decreasing. So these really are the relatives, visitors and contacts of the health care workers.
We have three patients discharged today, so the total figure is that five patients have since been discharged. We had one additional death. We had five deaths yesterday, so now six deaths. And we have 31 patients in intensive care. So these are the sicker patients, the ones that we are keeping under very intense observation.
Reporter: ... intensive care numbers?
Dr Yeoh: We don't have the figures for yesterday because we didn't collect them yesterday. We intend to give you those figures in future, so that every day you know how many are in intensive care, but we did not collate the figures yesterday. We will collate them in future so you have a general picture about the seriousness of the conditions of the patients.
I also want to give you another figure. We have finished contact tracing in 240 of the family contacts of the health workers. Remember we had the doctors and nurses in Prince of Wales that got infections from the hospital. Many of these healthcare workers then went home. We have now done the contact tracing of all the 240 family members that were in contact with these healthcare workers. These relatives never went to the hospital. They are what we call secondary contacts. We have found six of these secondary contacts have been infected. The usefulness of this is that it gives you an idea of what happens once the infection leaves the hospital setting, in the home environment, how many are likely to get the infection. We have not completed all of the contact tracing yet, but so far we have done 240 and six of them have been infected. It will give you some ideas of the infectivity after you leave the hospital setting.
Dr Yeoh: I would like to clarify something about the doctor who stayed at the Metropole on the ninth floor. Yesterday Dr Margaret Chan gave a briefing to you at 10 o'clock I believe and linked up five clusters. One was from Singapore; one was from Toronto and three in Hong Kong. The three as you know were in the Prince of Wales cluster; in fact one of the patients as you know visited the Metropole Hotel, the ninth floor at exactly the same time. The second cluster was the private hospital cluster where the patient in the private hospital group also stayed in the Metropole at the same time. The third one was the patient himself, the professor from Guangzhou. We also have now confirmed that there was another patient in our cluster who also stayed in the Metropole Hotel on the ninth floor exactly at the same time. This is the businessman who got sick in Vietnam.
He also stayed at the hotel exactly during those few days. So in Hong Kong we now have those eight clusters and four can be linked up to one particular case. So it's a very, very unusual phenomenon. On the one hand, you worry because it's highly infectious. I've spoken to our experts again today because I've asked our experts that based on this sort of information, what do we make out of it. Obviously it seems to be very, very infectious. Their opinion is that it is still droplets because it can still occur, and because the lift lobby area in the Metropole Hotel is very small. Of course the virus is also in the environment. It appears that when people are very sick, they are very infectious. So this is consistent with the picture we've seen that it's really the healthcare workers and family members that have looked after very sick patients, because it's probably when they're very sick, they shed a lot of virus, so they are highly infectious at that time. So at that time contacts like you would expect in those incidents are very, very high infectious. That's the downside. The upside is, of course, if we're able to link up almost 80 per cent of cases to the one person, then it seems that if the other four clusters have nothing to do with it, then the numbers in the community may be smaller at least for the severe infections. Of course, we are just speculating because without a test that breaks down prevalence in the community, if we're able to link it up to one person, then you're able to say that maybe it's not as widespread in the community.
Dr Yeoh: I just want to conclude by saying we are trying to give you as honest, as updated and as accurate as possible. It's not easy to do it because we have new information coming out, we are reviewing all our figures everyday and all that. I think in terms of the precautions the community can take, based on what we know, the general advice still holds that people should be taking care of themselves. For individuals who have coughs and colds, it's always good practice to wear masks so you don't transmit to others. For the others in the community, if you are concerned, avoid very crowded places, wash hands, take sanitary precautions, take good care of your own health and obviously the risk will be lower. It's going to be difficult to actually guarantee to individuals. But the highest-risk individuals continue to be healthcare workers who are in close contact with patients with severe atypical pneumonia and close family contacts.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)
End/Thursday, March 20, 2003
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