The boy is to face court under a provision of the Prevention of Disease Ordinance which may never have been invoked before
A 14-year-old schoolboy accused of setting off panic across Hong Kong on April 1 with a bogus online news report saying the city had been declared an infected port looks set to make legal history after being charged over the Sars stunt.
The Form Three student yesterday was issued with a court summons and charged under a provision of the Quarantine and Prevention of Disease Ordinance, which outlaws spreading false information about infectious diseases.
Police and the Justice Department said the provision relating to false information had not been used in recent years and the boy may be the first person charged with the offence in the ordinance's history. The ordinance was introduced in 1936. The maximum fine for spreading false information, a civil offence, is $2,500.
Sars was only added to the list of infectious diseases to which the ordinance is applicable on March 27, five days before the student allegedly committed his offence.
'Our counsel gave the advice [on the charge] to the police. The counsel is of the opinion that it is rarely used [and] perhaps has never been used previously,' a spokesman with the Department of Justice said.
Under the ordinance, a person may not 'knowingly furnish any information which is false concerning any such disease or death'.
