le H252
March 12, 2008
OK, I’m getting the crap outta here. Living in HK is more masochistic than living in Detroit:
HONG KONG CONSIDERS CLOSING ALL SCHOOLS AS FLU OUTBREAK WORSENS
Hong Kong (dpa) – Hong Kong government officials were considering Wednesday whether to close all schools as a flu outbreak worsened, infecting hundreds of children and shutting down a second school.
Ho Yat Tung Primary School on Tuesday was shut down early for Easter after a 7-year-old boy died of a respiratory illness and about 40 other pupils fell ill with the flu.
On Wednesday morning, about 100 pupils at another primary school in the city’s Yuen Long district fell ill with the flu, and the school also decided to close early ahead of next week’s scheduled holiday.
Health Secretary York Chow said Wednesday that the government would monitor the flu outbreak over the coming days before deciding whether all schools in the city of 6.9 million should be closed.
The school closures are the first in Hong Kong since the 2003 outbreak of the flu-like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed 299 people, infected 1,755 and led to widespread panic across the former British colony.
Concerns over the current outbreak, which also led to the death of a girl, 3, on March 1, has seen the return in schools and hospitals of the face masks that were ubiquitous during the 2003 crisis.
Government officials have also appealed to people to stop stockpiling the drug Tamiflu, which is used to counter avian flu.
There is no evidence yet of any infections involving bird flu.
Emergency units at hospitals, meanwhile, said they are struggling to cope with the volume of parents bringing in children with flu symptoms as fears about the flu outbreak mount.
Chow said Wednesday that the current outbreak appeared to be worse in primary schools and told reporters, “We will monitor the situation in the coming days to see if there is a real increase, a surge, in the influenza virus in our community.”
Chow suggested the government might leave secondary schools open and order primary schools to close. “If we have to adopt a closure policy, it would affect mostly the primary schools,” he said.
As well as SARS, Hong Kong saw the world’s first modern-day outbreak of bird flu in 1997 when the virus infected 18 people, killing six of them. dpa hp ls
