Despite 74 Hongkongers having died from the flu so far this year, it has emerged that the vaccine we actually need will not be available until April, after the winter peak is expected to have died down.
The city’s current flu epidemic, which saw 10 hospital patients die yesterday in the biggest one-day death toll of the year, has been exasperated because of an incorrect prediction on flu patterns by the World Health Organisation.
The organisation thought a Texan variant of influenza was going to plague the northern hemisphere this year, when in fact we got a strain from Switzerland. Blooming cuckoo clock making meddlers.
This, unfortunately, has led to a mis-matching of vaccines, meaning the drugs we’ve been shooting up the arms of our old people aren’t working as well as they should.
It will, however, take a few months for the correct vaccine to be made and administered, by which point the majority of us will have produced the right antibodies to fight the flu all by ourselves.
There are currently clusters of flu patients in isolation at Siu Lam, Shatin and Kowloon hospitals, as well as one lonely patient at Castle Peak Hospital.
Get well soon, guys.
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