Hong Kong Flu—In Proportion

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31881, 8 January 1969, Page 10

Hong Kong Flu—In Proportion

The statement by the Assistant Director of Public Health (Dr B. W. Christmas) on supplies of vaccine against Hong Kong flu should help the public to keep a sense of proportion about this supposedly serious new threat to their health. Hong Kong flu appears to be no more severe and no more virulent than other forms of influenza; but because it is a new strain to which no measure of public immunity has yet been built up it can be expected—if it hits this country—to affect far more people than the common strains of influenza normally do. Supplies of vaccine will begin to arrive in New Zealand next month; but Dr Christmas said that no programme of mass immunisation was proposed. The available supplies will be used to protect the elderly and others with heart and respiratory weaknesses to whom an attack of Hong Kong flu—or any kind of flu—is a special risk.

It is very doubtful whether New Zealand could obtain sufficient vaccine for a wider programme. Neither Britain nor the United States is producing much more than it requires for its own “special “ risk ” programmes. As soon as the virus was isolated the British drug firms turned their attention to preparing and testing vaccines; but they saw no need to divert disproportionate resources to the task, and they were not encouraged to do so by public health authorities unimpressed by the demands of those who would have had the whole of the nation’s scientific and medical resources thrown into the fray. In spite of the large numbers of people stricken in North America, the death-rate has not been abnormal; and medical opinion in Britain now rates Hong Kong flu as “ a relatively mild ” virus. The “ Daily Telegraph ” commented recently that the initial mistake, no doubt, was in giving it so malevolent a name as Mao flu or Red flu. As a result the entire British public had been terrorised in a way reminiscent of the fears engendered in naughty children by a visit from “ Boney ” a century and a half ago.