Press Releases

Transcript of SHWF's opening statement on the isolation order

The following is the transcript of the opening statement by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, at the press briefing on the implementation of an isolation order this morning (March 31):

Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong: As you know we had this outbreak of what we called atypical pneumonia, which has also been called severe acute respiratory syndrome. Based on the evolution of this disease, we had a very large outbreak of infections in the residents of Amoy Gardens. We have been following this, and we are quite alarmed by the increase in the number of people who are infected in Amoy Gardens. And, up to this morning, we are now seeing that 213 of the residents have been admitted with suspected infection and pneumonia. Of which, 107 came from one block in this housing estate. So we have been very alarmed at the outbreak in this particular housing estate.

In this last couple of days, the Department of Health has been working flat out to investigate this outbreak, to really understand what has been happening. We have been following this on a daily basis. And yesterday when we had enough information, in the afternoon I had a meeting with all the experts and Department of Health colleagues and we decided that we needed to have this isolation order to protect the public and the residents. Obviously, we had done this with our assessment and the decision has been made after considering all the facts. We really felt that because the source of infection appears to be in E Block and because most of the infections have been in E Block. And in E Block, there was a person, who visited a resident there, who was infected through the Prince of Wales trail. A particular patient from the Prince of Wales Hospital who was infected by this virus, had pneumonia. And in the period before this individual was hospitalised, visited the Amoy Gardens - because his brother stayed there - on four occasions. And we believe it is during one of these occasions that there was some breakdown in the system and he infected residents in the whole block. We have not determined the actual mechanism of infection although we have done a lot of investigations. They are proceeding because the investigations obviously are very complex. But we have reason to believe, and there is a lot of evidence based on the public health investigations, that this is the source of infection. And the other residents in other blocks have been affected as a spillover from this infected block. So this infected block has to be dealt with in a very, very exceptional way. And so we have activated this isolation order.

The operations were mounted early this morning. As you know, it was done with the co-operation of the police and all the other government departments. And I am most grateful to the departments that took part and also to all the residents because they were, on the whole, very very co-operative and very understanding of why we had to do it. Obviously there were some disagreements and discontent by individuals, but as a whole, the residents were really very co-operative and I am most grateful to them because we are imposing restrictions on their personal freedoms.

Obviously, we have to look at other measures to try to contain the problem and we will be meeting again this afternoon to look at all the other measures that need be done in the face of this very large outbreak.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)

End/Monday, March 31, 2003
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