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Following is a transcript of the opening remark by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a press briefing on the video conference with World Health Organisation (WHO) officials on severe acute respiratory syndrome today (May 6):
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: We had a discussion with the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr David Heymann, who is the executive director of the Communicable Diseases Division. And we talked about mainly two things. One of course was about the control of the epidemic in Hong Kong and he was obviously very pleased that our control measures seem to be effective and our numbers are coming down gradually but surely. So he was very supportive and appreciative of the work that was done in Hong Kong. The second thing we'd discussed was the travel advisory alert and the criteria for lifting this travel advisory alert, and he set out three criteria for considering this.
The first is of course the magnitude of the outbreak, and by the magnitude he is really talking about the number of active cases and the average number of new cases every day. He emphasised that the most important was the number of new cases every day which was one of the factors they would consider. He also emphasised that it was not just the number of cases on the average but also whether there were great fluctuations in the numbers. So if you have numbers that are coming down very smoothly, like we have in Hong Kong, that to the WHO is much more encouraging and reassuring that the outbreak is under control. So when there are large variations in the number of cases, there are obviously questions relating to how effective the control is. The number that he is looking at currently is an average of about five new cases a day. That seems to be a key part. But for what duration is something that the WHO can consider, I think it is really more concerned with the overall control measures, how effective we are, rather than just absolute numbers. So those are criteria that they are considering. So the numbers are something they look at, and the five new cases a day, since the number that the WHO are using, and that's the main figure, but they are also looking at the number of active cases but they say that those can be considered more flexibly.
The second criterion is whether we export cases of SARS to other places. The good news is that we have met this criterion already because in the last three weeks we have not exported any cases of SARS to other places.
The third criterion would be the mode of transmission. So they are concerned about transmission in the local community. Obviously, for most of our cases we can link up the context to either the health care setting or between patients and the community; patients and family members; and family members and staff. However, they are concerned about cases that are occurring out in the community.
I did raise the issue that in Hong Kong because of the criteria of SARS given by the WHO. One of the criteria is anyone with pneumonia who resides in the area with SARS, and of course we all reside in the area with SARS. So it does capture a lot of the atypical pneumonia cases that we normally see in Hong Kong that are caused by other viruses. There's some difficulty sometimes in distinguishing between the background atypical pneumonia cases caused by other viruses and that by the SARS virus, the coronavirus.
And I asked about the status of doing tests on the coronavirus, whether that could be used as one of the criteria. But he felt it was a bit early because there is insufficient information. As you know, with the tests with the coronavirus, the two tests: one is of course testing for the viral RNA, and that is done early in the illness. And the other is doing the antibody test which usually is not positive until one week at least after the onset of the illness. But the antibody test is usually positive by the third week.
We are in the process of doing tests on all our confirmed cases and of course they are looking forward to the information that we are going to provide for them because that would help us distinguish between the background atypical pneumonia cases and the cases of atypical pneumonia caused by the coronavirus. So, that was essentially our discussion.
And the third is about imported cases like the potential we had just two days ago when we had the distress call from the Malaysian ship. In fact, the WHO was very appreciative of what Hong Kong did and he asked me to thank the HKSAR Government and the community for accepting the distress call. Obviously that is an area of concern for us. If they turned to be SARS in the count for our numbers, I'm sure they would deal with those numbers sympathetically.
So, those are essentially our discussions with the WHO in Geneva on those three topics. I would be happy to answer any questions that you have.
(Please also refer to Chinese portion)
End/Tuesday, May 6, 2003
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