HK about to enter peak flu season: health officials
The number of people taken into hospital because of flu as well as the number of severe cases recently suggests Hong Kong will enter the peak winter season for the illness next week, health officials said on Thursday. "The latest influenza indicators showed that we are about to enter the winter influenza season because one of the key indicators has exceeded the threshold and the other one is approaching the threshold," said Chuang Shuk-kwan from the Centre for Health Protection.  "The usual duration of the influenza season in the past was maybe 8 weeks or 12 weeks, sometimes longer. So it is difficult to anticipate or predict the exact duration of the influenza season and also the severity." Officials said more than 1.7 million people had received the latest flu jab as of Monday. But while the number of children and elderly people getting vaccinated is higher than last year, half of such residents are still unprotected.  Meanwhile, the Hospital Authority said the occupancy rate of inpatient beds in the medical and paediatric departments of acute hospitals reached 116 percent and 92 percent respectively on Wednesday.  "We are currently under pressure. But actually we have experience in handling such pressure," said the authority's chief manager Larry Lee.  "We had twice the service demand surge last year... in the middle of the year and also in October. We have to follow our basic response plan. We monitor different parameters, including figures of influenza, Covid and also the bed situations. And also we have promulgated different measures to try to increase the turnover rate, efficiency, and manpower of our hospitals."