Hong Kong schools and parents should bring forward vaccination appointments for pupils and children and strengthen control measures, infectious disease specialists have said, warning that influenza B is just as dangerous as influenza A.<\/p>\n
Their calls were made after a 13-year-old girl who had not received the seasonal influenza vaccination died in hospital on Sunday following an influenza B infection. It is the first paediatric flu-related death in Hong Kong this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSchool administrations should consider liaising with the school immunisation teams for earlier vaccine appointments,\u201d said Dr Mike Kwan Yat-wah, president of the Asian Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents can also decide to get their children vaccinated in other ways, such as through private doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also stressed that serious complications could arise from seasonal influenza.<\/p>\n
According to Kwan, the influenza B virus can cause myocarditis \u2013 an inflammation of the inner muscular layer of the heart \u2013 or affect other organs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong schools and parents should bring forward vaccination appointments for pupils and children and strengthen control measures,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[50574,26534,3414,50573,50569,103,240,50570,61,50568,50572,60,582,50571,50566,50575,50567,49935],"class_list":["post-77125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-asian-society-for-paediatric-infectious-diseases","tag-centre-for-health-protection","tag-department-of-health","tag-dr-joseph-tsang-kay-yan","tag-dr-mike-kwan-yat-wah","tag-health","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-childrens-hospital","tag-ie","tag-influenza-a-virus","tag-influenza-b-infection","tag-ireland","tag-japan","tag-ma-on-shan","tag-myocarditis","tag-prince-of-wales-hospital","tag-seasonal-influenza-vaccination","tag-twghs-wong-fung-ling-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}