• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Bird Flu Pandemic Could Hit One Million in Hong Kong - Expert

Posted on: Friday, 7 October 2005, 06:01 CDT

Text of report by Mary Ann Benitez headlined: "Pandemic could hit 1m people in HK, says expert" by Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post website on 7 October

One million Hong Kong people could be hit by bird flu in an eight- week pandemic that would grind the city to a halt, a top local disease expert warned yesterday.

Thomas Tsang Ho-fai, consultant at the Centre for Health Protection, outlined contingency measures that could be used to cope with a worst-case scenario that left 15 per cent of the population sick. He warned that anti-viral drugs would have limited effectiveness given how infectious bird flu could be.

"If you have one million people coming down with sickness within an eight-week period, it would create a huge stress on the health- care system and how we are going to cope with that is a major question," Dr Tsang said.

He refused to speculate on the number of people who might die but previous bird flu waves have killed as many as 55 per cent of the people infected.

His comments follow statements on Wednesday from Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food York Chow Yat-ngok that what he feared most was bird flu. "It's difficult to say what would be the worst scenario ... perhaps the whole world will collapse," Dr Chow said.

Dr Tsang said he based his prediction of an eight-week pandemic duration on the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic. The number of people falling ill would peak about four to five weeks after the first cases appeared, then gradually subside through the eighth week.

A second flu wave could follow in 12 months, he added.

Dr Tsang said quarantine and isolation would work in the early phases, but then the city would have to rely on public health measures more than anything else.

"Once past a certain stage where the attack rate hits 5-10 per cent [of the population], then there is no way you can quarantine so many people. It is unmanageable," he said.

"In those circumstances, basic hygiene - hand-washing, wearing masks, increasing social distance so that schools will be closed, public functions will not take place, people will stay at home - may delay the spread of pandemic flu.

"I would envisage a lot of societal activities will come to a close, maybe some companies will cease operations altogether."

Dr Tsang said that once H5N1 picked up the ability to spread efficiently between humans, "it will be a totally different ball game".

"There may not be any way to stop it completely," he admitted.

"So unlike SARS, where you can bring it to a close, there may not be a way to interrupt transmission of this novel influenza strain.

"Under those circumstances, the main focus would be to reduce morbidity and mortality, at least try to delay its spread but not entirely interrupting it.

"By delaying its spread we may be able to buy time for the vaccine to come along. The vaccine will be the only ultimate weapon to stop transmission of the novel bird flu strain."

Dr Tsang also warned that the usefulness of antiviral drugs in a pandemic was limited.

"Antivirals are useful in that they can mitigate symptoms, they can treat patients and, for certain individuals, they may have some prophylactic action [to help prevent people from getting sick]." But the virus can easily develop resistance with widespread use of the drugs.

US-based flu expert Henry Niman agreed that antivirals would be of limited use. "Resistance will likely develop quickly, so their effect will be limited, as will distribution if a true pandemic hits this year or next."

But Dr Niman warned that vaccines, too, would only be marginally useful.

If it mutated into a strain that spread easily between humans, H5N1 had the potential to be worse than the 1918 Spanish flu, he said. About 300 million people could die.

On Wednesday, scientists reported they had re-created the 1918 H1N1 virus, unlocking the secrets of its virulence.

Hong Kong officials said the city remained on "alert" level because of the bird flu cases in Southeast Asia.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

More News in this Category