Secretary for Food & Health Dr York Chow urges people, particularly healthcare workers, to receive flu vaccines as the flu peak season is expected to last until mid-March. People with flu symptoms should seek treatment as soon as possible.
Dr Chow today told reporters this year’s peak is particularly severe, because 90% of flu-isolate detections are influenza A (H1N1) 2009, the swine flu virus, which tends to have more serious complications in patients.
In the past two weeks, 48 flu patients - 28 males and 20 females - were admitted to intensive care units and 60% of them have chronic illness such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma. Nine of them have died.
“Because of resumption of schools in the coming weeks, we expect that there would be outbreaks in schools. We expect that there will be at least tens of schools that would have outbreaks every week.”
The Government will closely monitor the situation and will advise schools with serious outbreaks or fatal cases to suspend classes.
“We would like to advise all the at-risk group patients to seek treatment as soon as possible when they have symptoms of influenza,” Dr Chow said.
