Press Releases

SFH on seasonal influenza

Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Sophia Chan, at the Legislative Council Complex today (July 17):

Reporter: (About the key measures taken by the Government to tackle the summer surge.)

Secretary for Food and Health: First of all, we had a meeting with the Hospital Authority (HA) as well as the Centre for Health Protection (of the Department of Health (DH)) very early this morning in order to better understand the latest situation of seasonal influenza. The HA has reported to me their measures in terms of tackling the increased demand of services arising from the summer surge. Just now, we have already talked about some of the existing measures that we have strengthened and the HA has also explored the possibility of working with outside agencies to get more manpower. For example, doctors of the DH may use their outside office time to help the HA in their general out-patient clinics. Another possibility is to work with private hospitals to increase the number of beds to tackle the existing problem. So, these are some of the measures plus the HA also got other measures in terms of hiring more part-time healthcare professionals.

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

Ends/Monday, July 17, 2017
Issued at HKT 17:31
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