Press Releases

Secretary for Food and Health on influenza

Following is a transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session at the Legislative Council Building today (March 12):

Reporter: Under what circumstances will schools be closed earlier for Easter holidays?

Secretary for Food and Health: Take yesterday's school as an example, the school has six students that needed to be hospitalised. One of them unfortunately died. It is important for us to have a thorough investigation into and a good clean up of the whole environment. There is anxiety in the school, for students and parents, as well as teachers and the management. So we feel this is appropriate for us to advise the school to close down for a period of resting so the people can go home. We will follow up on those infected cases to see whether they have any unusual features. After the clean-up of the school, when students come back perhaps in two weeks' time, everything can start afresh. We will look at similar arrangements if there are any unusual elements or unusual appearances of infected cases in other schools. Whether we need to close down all the schools, higher schools and primary schools alike, it seems that the primary schools are being more affected than the higher schools. If we have to adopt a closure policy, it would affect mostly the primary schools. Whether the primary schools should close down, we have to see for a few more days. We will monitor the situation to see whether we have a real surge in influenza virus in our community.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)


Ends/Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Issued at HKT 15:29

NNNN