While Hong Kong health officials note that the latest surveillance data shows that the overall influenza activity continues to decrease in the city, they also say flu activity is still above the baseline.
In the past 24 hours, the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection (CHP) reported five additional cases of influenza-associated admission to intensive care units or death (including four deaths) among adults aged 18 or above.
With the newest cases reported, this brings the total ICU flu admissions to 529, including 399 fatalities. This compares to 266 cases (133 deaths) reported during the same period in 2014.
The CHP reports they are still seeing approximately five flu-related fatalities daily though that number is slowly decreasing. Specifically, last week (from March 8 to 14), 36 cases (29 deaths) were recorded. Separately, a daily average of 6.9 cases (5.1 deaths) were filed in the last seven days (from March 11 to 17), compared with 6.1 cases (5.4 deaths) in the preceding seven days (from March 4 to 10).
As of March 15, about 255,000 doses and 246,000 doses of influenza vaccines had been administered to eligible groups under the Government Vaccination Program and the Vaccination Subsidy Schemes 2014/15 respectively, an eight per cent and five per cent increase from the same period of last year.
