In action: The two-day drill gets underway.

A two-day drill has launched to test Government departments' preparedness for an outbreak of any unknown communicable disease. The Centre for Health Protection and 30 departments started the exercise yesterday.

Over 250 participants, including Acting Chief Executive Donald Tsang and Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food Dr York Chow, are involved. Ten local, Mainland and overseas experts have been invited to observe.

Director of Health Dr Lam Ping-yan said the exercise provides an opportunity for the Government and relevant stakeholders to practise and review contingency plans for combating SARS-like communicable diseases and to assess the integration of the centre into the plans.

The adequacy of contingency operational protocols formulated by the departments and agencies concerned will be assessed after the exercise.

The scenario

The exercise scenario involved two clusters of medical and healthcare workers in two public hospitals who developed fever and gastroenteritis symptoms after having close contact with two index patients. The situation triggered the Government's overall emergency mechanism on the outbreak of an unknown communicable disease.

The centre, upon notification from the Hospital Authority, started epidemiological investigations and contact tracing. The centre also arranged for close contacts of the patients to be quarantined to contain the spread.

The Level One Steering Committee under the chairmanship of Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food Dr York Chow was activated to review the adequacy of control measures and the response mechanism and to decide on what additional control and support measures were needed.

When the disease was later defined by the World Health Organisation as Severe Haemorrhagic Fever Syndrome (a notional name designed for the purpose of the exercise), steps were taken to include the disease in Schedule 1 of Infectious Diseases in Cap 141 of Corresponding measures. Isolation and home confinement were then initiated.

When Level Two was activated, Acting Chief Executive Donald Tsang convened the Level Two Steering Committee to formulate and direct an overall disease control strategy and decide what other measures should be taken, including decisions that have a wider impact on the community.

The exercise came to the end with a mock evacuation of residents from a building affected by the disease.