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Following is the transcript of the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a press briefing on the latest situation of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) today (April 23):
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I would not repeat the figures because they are probably quite easy to translate. But the other point I wish to make today is that at the border points for the departure points in Hong Kong, as you know we have already started doing checking for temperatures and checking the health status for people coming to Hong Kong for health status and for people exiting Hong Kong to take temperatures. But starting at midnight on April 24, we'll be taking the body temperatures of all departing, arriving and transit passengers at Chek Lap Kok. So this will be done manually starting on April 24.
At the same time, as you know, yesterday, the Deputy Director of Health has been in Shenzhen to look at the new thermal imaging devices to look at the temperature checks, they have the new devices developments in Shenzhen which we went to look at and try. We have placed an order for 50 of these machines to be delivered within this week and some of the machines are arriving within the next one or two days and we'll be testing machines and installing them at Lo Wu this week and as soon as we have all the machines set up, we'll be doing these temperature checks for all incoming and outgoing individuals at the border points at Lo Wu. So we hope that that will be done by the end of the week.
In the meantime, we also propose, starting on April 24 also at midnight, to do random body checks for arriving passengers at Lo Wu. At the same time, we'll also be doing body temperatures of all inbound passengers at Hung Hom Station. So this is our current status relating to the health checks at the border points.
(Please also see the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
End/Wednesday, April 23, 2003
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