Wuhan ‘pneumonia’: Hong Kong takes tougher precautions with more powers to investigate suspected cases
- Passengers arriving in city from mainland will be screened by health officials before they get off the train
- City leader says intervention is part of government’s rapid response to mystery outbreak
Hong Kong is taking tougher precautions against a mysterious, pneumonia-like virus in central China, laying the legal groundwork to put patients under quarantine if necessary and making it mandatory for doctors to notify the authorities of any suspected cases in the city.
Nine more travellers who returned from Wuhan with symptoms of either fever and respiratory infection or pneumonia were placed in hospital isolation wards on Tuesday, taking the total to 30 – 13 of whom have already been discharged after treatment – since December 31, 2019.
Hong Kong’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, said that travellers entering the city from Wuhan had been put through extra temperature screenings since Monday night. This came soon after the Food and Health Bureau said it expected to list the unidentified virus as a notifiable disease by the end of the week, empowering the authorities to enforce quarantine measures.
The Department of Health then announced on Tuesday afternoon that it would gazette a bill to amend the Prevention and Control of Disease Ordinance on Wednesday, including “severe respiratory disease associated with a novel infectious agent” as a statutory notifiable infectious disease with immediate effect.
“Recently some patients have been leaving hospitals before completing medical check-ups,” Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said. “The amendment of the law this time would be important for Hong Kong in preventing the spread of a new disease.”