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Elizabeth Cheung

Emily Tsang

The city will seek help from the World Health Organisation to ensure South Korea provides updates on cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), health secretary Dr Ko Wing-man said yesterday.
Ko also announced tighter health inspections at border checkpoints and the cancelling of two exchange tours to Seoul as information from South Korea remained opaque.
Korean health authorities confirmed yesterday that two people - a 58-year-old woman and a 71-year-old man - had died from Mers. Twenty-five people have been infected in South Korea, the most outside the Middle East.
Ko said the city had earlier asked South Korean authorities for information, such as the names of medical institutions that treated the infected, but they could not provide much detail.
"We still do not know which medical institutions have been involved. There is a lack of transparency with the information and it is worrying," said Ko.
"We will seek assistance from the WHO."
Hong Kong, as part of China, and South Korea are member parties of the WHO, which adopted a system in 2005 to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told the Post that the organisation was working with health authorities in Hong Kong and South Korea to assess the risk and to ensure information was exchanged between states.
"The most important thing for [member states] to do right now is contact tracing," said Lindmeier. "The WHO is collecting information from different parties and making it available to different states."
He said it was important for governments to place those who came into contact with infected patients under medical surveillance and to isolate those with flu-like symptoms, but the WHO would not advocate a mandatory quarantine. He would not comment on how individual states were handling the situation.
In the wake of a 44-year-old infected traveller from South Korea who slipped through a medical check at Hong Kong's airport last week before taking a bus to the mainland, Ko said surveillance at border checkpoints would be tightened.
Currently, all incoming visitors who have a fever and symptoms of respiratory infection are asked to take a health assessment by medical officers at border checkpoints. The visitors are asked to give details of their recent travel and contact history.
If they have recently visited the Middle East or medical institutions in Seoul, they will be treated as suspected cases and be sent to hospital for surveillance.
From now on, Ko said, such visitors would have to sign an assessment form to state the information they gave was correct. "Our medical workers will remind them that giving false information is a breach of laws," he said.
Ko's announcement came after the infected South Korean man denied claims that he had lied about his contact and travel history to medical officers at Chek Lap Kok airport on Tuesday last week.
Hong Kong health officials said the man was intercepted by a nurse because he had a fever but was allowed to go after he denied having contact with Mers patients or visiting Mers-hit areas.
The man, surnamed Kim, told South Korean television station KBS that officials had only asked him if he had any flu symptoms and if he had been to hospital recently. He said he was not asked if he had Mers.
Kim said a clinic near his home in Gyeonggi-do asked him to go for a medical examination after his father was confirmed to have contracted Mers on May 21. But he said he did not go because he was not told of the seriousness of the virus.
The Hong Kong government has so far traced 61 people who had contact with Kim - 19 have been quarantined but none had shown any symptoms of Mers, for which there is no known cure or vaccine.
Kim's condition had worsened yesterday, said Dr Ling Yun, chief of the Huizhou Municipal Centre Hospital's intensive care unit.
Dr Ho Pak-leung, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, suggested authorities require visitors to fill in health declaration forms to solve any language problems.
Yesterday's developments came as an orthopaedic doctor at Kwong Wah Hospital, Yau Ma Tei, tested negative for Mers. He had complained of a sore throat for two or three days since returning from an attachment at a medical institution in Seoul.
Additional reporting by Christy Choi and Mimi Lau

Definition of a suspected Mers case:
Show symptoms such as fever, cough or shortness of breath
Visitors have been to either countries in the Middle East or health care facilities in Seoul in the previous two to 14 days
Suspected cases will be sent to hospital for immediate isolation and tests
 


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News

Hong Kong

Health & Environment

Tighter health checks at border, and minister wants more timely updates on deadly virus


The city will seek help from the World Health Organisation to ensure South Korea provides updates on cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), health secretary Dr Ko Wing-man said yesterday.
