# 5300
From the news.gov.hk website, we get report on Hong Kong’s Secretary of Food & Health Dr. York Chow, who is urging residents to seek early treatment for flu-like symptoms.
The reason is the predominance of the 2009 H1N1 virus among cases sampled.
The UK, much of Europe, and parts of Asia continue to see the 2009 H1N1 virus as the major component of their influenza season, while in North America seasonal H3N2 has been the big player.
Flu patients urged to seek early treatment
February 09, 2011
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.
On Monday, Feb 7th, the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection issued an influenza update, portions of which follows:
7 February 2011
The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health today (February 7) again reminded the public to stay alert against influenza during the Chinese New Year as Hong Kong is in the winter influenza peak season.
The CHP's Public Health Laboratory Centre recorded a total of 880 influenza isolate detections between January 31 and February 4. The majority (91%) of them were influenza A (H1N1) 2009, followed by influenza B (5%) and influenza A (H3N2) (4%).
Influenza-like-illness (ILI) consultation rates at government out-patient clinics and general practitioners remained at a high level. ILI consultation rates at sentinel private doctors for the week ending January 29 was 71.3 per 1,000 consultations while the corresponding figure for the preceding week was 65.8. The ILI consultation rates at government out-patient clinics were 8.0 per 1,000 consultations for the above two weeks.
During the 48 hours ending at 2pm today, CHP received four reports of ILI outbreaks occurring in institutions, affecting 18 people.
