March 27, 2013

The Food & Health Bureau, the Centre for Health Protection and other departments today conducted a desktop exercise to test their preparedness for any outbreak of novel coronavirus-associated severe respiratory disease.
 
In the simulation, Hong Kong encountered its first imported coronavirus case, and 36 senior representatives of government agencies and other organisations held a serious response level steering committee meeting, chaired by the Secretary for Food & Health.
 
They assessed the risk level by considering areas of transmissibility, geographical spread, clinical severity, pre-existing immunity, availability of effective preventive measures and international health authorities’ recommendations.
 
The exercise tested the Government's response measures for the control of the disease, its command structure, and the response-level activation mechanism.
 
It also focused on the preparedness and response actions of government agencies and other organisations, and offered members the opportunity to assess the risk of the health impact on Hong Kong, before deciding the need for response level's escalation from "serious" to "emergency".
 
It served to formulate and oversee the implementation of a co-ordinated and timely response and disease-control strategy, and to decide on measures to be taken which will have a wider impact on the community.