Receipts attached 4 sources
Sources
Limits
Adult surveillance deaths are deaths during an admission with laboratory-confirmed influenza; CHP says other acute or underlying conditions may have caused death. The October 28 reply gives September A&E treatment performance but no equivalent October figures or hospital-specific waiting-time account. The CHP severe-case figures are provisional and may be revised. The 900,000 figure counts administered vaccine doses, not population coverage, and does not explain the severe-case trend. David Hui's projection of activity into November is a forecast, not a measured outcome.
Corrections
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Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau said Wednesday, October 28, that there was no information suggesting the recent rise in attendances from influenza and other respiratory illnesses had placed an excessive burden on public hospitals’ accident and emergency (A&E) departments. His written Legislative Council reply counted 869 severe adult cases in the Hong Kong flu season, including 599 deaths, through October 22.
Those are surveillance counts, not a finding that influenza caused every death. The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) counts adults with laboratory-confirmed flu who were admitted to intensive care or died during the same hospital admission; its weekly report says another acute or underlying condition may have caused the admission or death. The reply also recorded 26 severe pediatric cases in the season since late June, including two deaths.
September results, October question
For evidence that public emergency care was keeping pace, the reply pointed to September. The government said it fully met its service targets for Category I critical and Category II emergency patients: all critical patients received immediate treatment, and the target of treating emergency patients within 15 minutes was achieved. The target for Category II is 95%, not everyone, within that window. For Category III urgent patients, 90.6% were treated within 30 minutes, up from 83.1% in September 2025.
For the two less urgent categories, the September average wait was 152 minutes, roughly comparable to the previous September, the reply said. The government did not provide corresponding October treatment-time figures in that answer. Its September results show how priority triage performed then; they do not describe every patient’s wait at every hospital during October.
How the Hong Kong flu season compares
The CHP’s October 22 surveillance report offers a like-for-like measure of the flu burden. After 17 complete weeks of the current season, it counted 841 severe adult cases and 580 deaths. At the same duration in major flu seasons from 2023 through 2025, the range was 489 to 616 adult cases and 330 to 387 deaths. The later October 22 totals in the legislative reply include further reports beyond that matched 17-week point.
In an RTHK radio interview on October 22, CHP controller Edwin Tsui said the season, then in its 16th week, showed no clear downward trend. Separately, Chinese University of Hong Kong respiratory-medicine professor David Hui told HK01 on October 26 that the shift in dominant viruses from H3 to H1 could keep the outbreak going into November. That is a forecast, not a measured November outcome.
Vaccination pace trails last year
The legislative reply said around 900,000 doses had been administered under the 2026/27 seasonal flu vaccination programs by October 19, about 10% fewer than at the same point last year. Doses administered are not a vaccination-coverage rate, and the figures do not establish why this season’s severe-case tally is higher. The government says eligible residents can receive free or subsidized shots; the CHP recommends seasonal vaccination for people aged six months or older unless contraindicated.
The record therefore supports two narrower conclusions: severe adult cases have outpaced recent seasons at a comparable point, and urgent A&E treatment met the government’s September targets. Whether October waiting-time performance held up as the season continued is not answered in the October 28 reply.