Hong Kong has done an excellent job against SARS, and the World
Health Organization (WHO) will conduct a supplementary work
focusing on the environmental transmission of the virus in Hong
Kong.
WHO Senior Advisor William Cocksedge made the remarks Thursday
after meeting with officials from the Department of Health of Hong
Kong.
The WHO expert said that Hong Kong has done everything that should
have been done at the time to combat SARS, and has done "an
excellent job."
He
noted that the WHO team conducting research in Hong Kong at the
invitation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
government doesn't mean that they will replace or do better than
what has been done in Hong Kong, as their work will supplement the
efforts of the Hong Kong government. The WHO team will stay in Hong
Kong for three weeks.
Cocksedge noted that his particular job after arriving in Hong Kong
Wednesday was to set up a seven-member team, comprising of experts
on building and environment from Canada and Austria, who will come
to Hong Kong in the next few days.
When they all arrive, they will look at some buildings in Hong
Kong, among them the Amoy Gardens, a residential estate which has
witnessed the contraction of SARS of more than 300 residents.
Cocksedge pointed out part of the traveling advice WHO issued
earlier against Hong Kong is based on the environmental
transmission pattern of SARS in the Amoy Gardens, whose unusualness
spells the necessity of their planned investigation.
Moreover, he said, a lot of expertise has been applied to the
clinical and laboratory studies of SARS, but not in the cause and
effect relationship between virus and environment.
Cocksedge stated that they will build on this part of knowledge on
SARS so as to come up with more controlling measures of the
highly-infectious virus in Hong Kong, where there are a lot of
high-rising buildings with a high population density.
He
noted that the report handed by the Hong Kong government on the
case of Amoy Gardens proposed "a possible theory," and they will
study the report carefully and conduct on-the-spot investigations
to see if there are other possibilities.
(Xinhua News Agency April 25, 2003)