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The Department of Health (DH) today (May 18) is conducting follow up investigation into a case in which a Mainland resident who had stayed in Hong Kong last week was suspected to have been infected with human swine influenza (Influenza A H1N1).
The patient is a 59-year-old man living in Guangdong Province who had stayed in a room on the 18th floor of Royal Plaza Hotel in Mong Kok with his wife for two days after arriving from Korea in the late evening of May 13.
The man developed sore throat and cough in the afternoon of May 14. The couple checked out from the hotel before noon of May 15 and took a taxi from the hotel to Hung Hom Station at about 3.30pm. They left for Guangzhou by through train (T810) in the afternoon on the same day.
The man felt chills and had fever while in the train and was isolated in a hospital upon arriving at Guangzhou.
According to the Guangdong health authority, the couple had travelled to Canada and the United States between April 22 and May 12 and arrived in Korea on May 12.
Public health personnel from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the DH today visited the hotel. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department also carried out disinfection of the room the patient stayed.
Meanwhile, the CHP has started tracing people with opportunities to have contact with the patient. So far two staff members of the hotel who had served guests of 18th floor on May 14 and 15 have been identified. They have no symptoms of influenza and will be taken to Lady MacLehose Holiday Village for quarantine up to May 22.
A DH spokesman urged people who had stayed on the 18th floor of Royal Plaza Hotel between late evening of May 13 and noon of May 15; those who sat in the 7th cabin of the through train (T810) on May 15; and the taxi driver to call the CHP hotline 2125 1111 to facilitate prompt investigations by the health authority.
Ends/Monday, May 18, 2009
Issued at HKT 23:04
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