Hong Kong schools and parents should bring forward vaccination appointments for 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 was the first paediatric flu-related death in Hong Kong this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSchool administrations should consider liaising with 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 get their children vaccinated through other ways, such as 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 children and strengthen control measures, infectious disease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[50775,24687,485,50774,50770,163,3448,50771,85,50769,50773,46,1437,50772,50767,50776,50768,50051],"class_list":["post-71156","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-il","tag-influenza-a-virus","tag-influenza-b-infection","tag-israel","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\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}