Press Release - April 19, 2003

Following is a transcript of the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a press conference today (April 19) on the treatment experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome and the clinical correlation of outcome in Hong Kong:

HKSAR Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: The purpose of this briefing is to give you the perspective of the whole treatment protocol for the treatment of patients with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). We'll be initially talking about the experiences on how we develop the treatment protocol because this is a very new infection where initially when we started treating patients, we didn't even know what was causing it. So, we have developed some empirical treatments and based on that experience we have now got quite a good protocol which gives response rate up to 95 per cent. Then we'll be talking about the factors that contributed to the effectiveness of the treatments because there are patients factors and virus factors which will distinguish which patient will respond better and which patient will not respond in the same way. We'll also be sharing with you the experiences that we have now that in our interactions with the Guangdong health authorities' experiences based on the interchange how we are going to adjust our treatment protocols. Finally, Professor Yuen (Kwok-yung) will be talking about the basis of our treatment and how we intend to enhance our treatment in the future. So, perhaps I'll start with Professor (Joseph) Sung.

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: We'll give you this table which Professor Sung has very kindly provided in term of the initial treatment responses, that just demonstrates how we made step-wise progression in developing our treatment protocols. The responses to steroids are about 90 per cent. The subsequent adjustments of our protocols and giving the steroids earlier, the overall responses to our treatment are about 95 per cent. So, our overall mortality currently is about five per cent. So this is our current status. This is the overall response rate but it doesn't distinguish between who will respond and who doesn't respond. As you know, there are factors such as age; the severity of illness, people who are more severely ill when they are presented, their response tend to be less good; their age is a factor; the third factor is whether the person has co-existing or pre-existing illness; and the fourth factor is how early people seek treatment. So, I'll ask Dr Yu (Wai-cho) to give you some of his views and findings on some of these factors that contribute to better responses or poorer responses.

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I think we present you the overall review of how we develop our treatment protocols and the basis on which how these were developed. We also share with you the experience that we had been working with other places and countries relating to their experiences. In fact Dr Yam mentioned about her interactions with the colleagues in the Mainland. We also had interactions with clinicians in Singapore. In fact, initially their treatment is similar to what we are doing, the eventual process as described by Professor Sung. They also initially gave antibiotics and they started giving steroids, and then giving Ribavirin. My last phone call with the Ministry of Health in Singapore told me that they were in fact using very similar treatment as we are. So this is the global experience and I will be very happy to answer any questions.

For updated information and latest news on respiratory tract infections, please visit the special home page on the subject at www.info.gov.hk/info/infection-e.htm, and the HKSAR Department of Health website at www.info.gov.hk/dh/ap.htm as well as the e-bulletin at www.news.gov.hk/en/index.shtml.