Announcing the arrangement on Wednesday, Dr Ada Lin Wai-chi, head of the centre’s Programme Management and Professional Development Branch, said provision of the nasal vaccine was a test.

“In the local setting, there has not been widespread use of the vaccine,” Lin said.

“The main objective of piloting the use of [the spray] in the school outreach this year is to test the feasibility and logistics arrangement in the application of [the nasal spray] in the vaccination programme.”

An outreach vaccination scheme in which health officers or partnering private doctors will administer free shots to pupils will begin on October 9 for kindergartens and October 23 for primary schools.

The spray has been available in the private market since its registration in Hong Kong in April last year but some medical experts have urged the government to provide it in the citywide vaccination scheme. A scientific committee under the centre had also recommended both forms of the flu vaccine for use in 2019/20 schemes.

Free flu shots at school hailed a success as pilot scheme upgraded

The government is procuring 2,000 doses of nasal vaccine and 245,000 doses of flu jabs for school outreach programmes. As of July 7, 435 primary schools and 707 kindergartens and childcare centres had signed up for outreach services.

The outreach scheme would be a pilot arrangement for kindergartens, but a regular one for primary schools starting this year after a trial last year.

The centre, hoping to encourage more educators to sign up, will not set any quotas on the number of participating schools this year. But it is not yet known how many schools will receive nasal spray doses. The centre will decide whether to provide institutions with it based on various factors.

“If they have a certain amount of children who are not suitable to use the [nasal spray], we will tend to exclude those schools from this particular trial because of the logistics arrangement,” Lin said.

‘Extraordinary breakthrough’ could lead to universal flu vaccine

Health minister Professor Sophia Chan Siu-chee said that based on previous experience, schools which had outreach vaccination were likely to be better protected during the flu peak season.

“[Those] schools showed a smaller number of outbreaks of influenza-like illness in the surveillance last year,” Chan said.

The flu vaccination rate among children aged from six months to under six years old was 34.5 per cent in 2018/19 while for those aged six to under 12 years old was 55.4 per cent.

Family doctor Dr Cheng Chi-man, vice-president of the Medical Association, said providing a more convenient arrangement was important when raising the vaccination rate among children.

“I think the main thing is that it’s not about the type of vaccines,” Cheng said. “Usually what parents look at is whether there are any side effects or if is any misunderstanding about the vaccines.”

He said extending the outreach scheme to more schools could help raise the vaccination rate because some parents had no time to bring their children to a clinic for flu jabs.

Dr Wong Ka-hing, the centre’s controller, said the overall local flu activity in the past few weeks was higher than in early May, but surveillance data indicated Hong Kong had not yet entered the summer flu season.