Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, is seeking experts’ advice on whether keeping young children home could prevent the spread of the influenza virus that has killed 104 people in less than a month.
Lam said she would talk to the city’s flu experts, University of Hong Kong microbiologist Professor Yuen Kwok-yung and Chinese University professor of respiratory medicine, Dr David Hui Shu-cheong, on Tuesday afternoon.
Since flu season began in Hong Kong last month, there have been more than 330 outbreaks of the virus.
Figures from the government’s Centre for Health Protection showed that from January 7 to February 4, 182 adults developed serious flu complications. Of those, 104 died, with 88 of them above the age of 65.
Eleven children had serious flu, and the two who died were a three-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy. On Monday, the centre warned seasonal influenza was “expected to remain at an elevated level in the coming few weeks”.
Meanwhile, Lam has injected HK$500m (US$64m) into public hospitals to cope with the flu outbreak. However, the emergency funding only accounts for about 0.8% of the Hospital Authority’s annual spending, which stood at HK$62bn in the financial year of 2016-17, according to its annual report.
To do its part to help, one Hong Kong school is now requiring parents to submit an explanation if they refused to allow their children to be vaccinated. The move subsequently boosted its participation rate to 74% among 550 pupils.
Baptist Rainbow Primary School principal, Chu Tsz-wing, said the school wanted to reduce the trouble of parents having to bring their children back and forth from the clinics.
“We are not forcing anyone to take the flu vaccine, it is entirely up to parents and we respect their decisions,” he Tsz-wing said.
“However, if some of them do not want their kids to participate, we just want to understand why, to facilitate communication between the school and parents.”
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