Press Releases

SFH on influenza and elderly health care voucher

Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, after attending a public function this afternoon (January 31):

Reporter : (On the latest flu situation)

Secretary for Food and Health: This is only the first month of the traditional (winter) influenza season, and if we already had so many serious cases, then I think it is reasonable to expect that there will be more to come. We in fact do not see a clear peak of plateauing within these few days. Therefore, we can only expect the plateau to be in February or even March, so the whole epidemic may last longer, and more patients will suffer from severe illness. That’s why I am very concerned about the measures taken by the Hospital Authority (HA), including the possibility of opening additional beds, having additional staff in the Accident and Emergency Department, making sure that the capacity of the Intensive Care Unit is still adequate. In particular, for the most serious cases, we may have to use ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). As at yesterday, we only had two patients on ECMO. I do not have an update today, but I will certainly do the update every day. In total, the HA has 12 ECMOs in five hospitals. I hope this is going to help us in particular in the more severe cases. We try to explore the possibility of introducing a vaccine which is targeting the influenza strain of H3N2 in circulation now, but I was given to understand that the vaccine is only going to be available in sufficient number at least in March or April. So I have to start advising the public to take other protection measures in addition to what we need to do, which is having healthy lifestyle, placing sufficient emphasis on personal, environmental and public hygiene, and washing hands. For the elderly or chronically ill patients, they should consider wearing a mask when they are going to places which may be more crowded.

Reporter: (On what more the Government can do in the meantime)

Secretary for Food and Health: We will not stop exploring all possibilities. But as of today, I think that is all that I can advise the public. If you fell ill, consult a doctor earlier. This is in particular relevant as Lunar New Year is coming. There is a trend for people to avoid consulting a doctor on the eve and the first day of the Lunar New Year. This is just not going to do anything good if you have a flu-like illness. I would also like to appeal to our citizens that they should consult a doctor earlier if they think they have caught flu, because anti-flu medicine is going to work best at the early stage, that is, within 24 to 48 hours (after the onset of influenza).

Reporter: So the elderly can benefit from the scheme to (allow the use of elderly health care vouchers in Shenzhen), right?

Secretary for Food and Health: Yes. Currently we are issuing elderly health care vouchers to the eligible elderly in Hong Kong. We have spent quite a duration of time in exploring the feasibility of letting our elderly use health care vouchers in Mainland China when consulting a doctor. We are very glad that the Shenzhen authorities issued a permission to us in December on using the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital as the first test point. We are working on the technical details, including currency conversion rate as well as computer linkage, and more importantly, the training of relevant personnel, so as to allow us to introduce the scheme in the middle of this year. Once the date is confirmed, we will let the public know as soon as possible.

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

Ends/Saturday, January 31, 2015
Issued at HKT 21:51

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