Hong Kong Confronts Swine Flu

The Hong Kong government warned that an outbreak of swine flu may happen before the summer holiday after the city confirmed the first case of H1N1 influenza in Asia last Friday.

Hong Kong's Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok warned Sunday that it was just a matter of time before the World Health Organization raised its epidemic alert level to the highest degree, and an outbreak of the deadly epidemic was difficult to avoid in highly populated Hong Kong, the epicenter of the SARS outbreak in 2003. SARS killed nearly 300 people in Hong Kong alone, and around 800 worldwide.

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The city hoisted the highest emergency alert level after a 25-year-old Mexican tourist was found to be carrying the A(H1N1), the so-called swine flu virus, on Friday in the first confirmed case in Asia.

The Mexican, whose name hasn't been disclosed, was admitted to a hospital in Hong Kong on Thursday night, just seven hours after he landed the city after flying via Shanghai from Mexico. The patient had a fever and other flu symptoms, and tested positive on Friday for swine flu virus.

Chow and a team of experts, including microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung of the University of Hong Kong, are speeding up their efforts to track down those who had close contact with the victim in Hong Kong. They are hoping to delay any outbreak until summer so as to avoid a scenario in which doctors and scientists do not have time to prepare a sufficient amount of vaccine or gather enough clinical data to help fight the disease.

Seared by its SARS experience, Hong Kong is taking no chances. About 30 passengers who sat close to the Mexican tourist on the plane have all been traced. Another 300 guests and staff at Hong Kong's Metro Park hotel where he stayed have been quarantined for seven days, starting Friday night. However medical officers are still looking for a further 50 hotel guests who have not returned to the hotel since the news of the quarantine became public.

The names of the missing guests have been passed to Immigration Department officials in order to prevent them from leaving the city and potentially spreading the virus to other countries.

In addition, a taxi driver who could be carrying the H1N1 flu virus is still at large, perhaps still driving passengers around the city. Hong Kong authorities believed they had located the taxi driver who had taken the Mexican man to a hospital after a driver called the government hotline to claim he had driven the man there. But the caller admitted Sunday that he had lied, saying he just wanted to test whether the government hotline was efficient.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong is also stepping up border screening and taking other precautions familiar to city residents from the SARS era. All arriving at the Hong Kong airport must fill out a health declaration form with a checklist of swine flu symptoms. And schools are requiring parents to take students' temperatures daily before they will be allowed to go to class.

Chow, the top health official in Hong Kong, said the authorities should not solely target Mexican tourists and travelers, adding it was more important to monitor all those who had been to Mexico or other affected countries
The Mexican government complained that China was discriminating against Mexicans after Beijing quarantined more than 70 Mexican citizens, even though some of them didn't have any flu symptoms.

To prevent swine flu, China canceled the only direct flights between China and Mexico and banned imports of pork from Mexico and some parts of the U.S. and Canada.link...