At the Frontline

Thanks to this beautiful and cautious nurse, Miss Wong, in discovering an infected patient, a Mexican, who arrived a week ago and resided at Metro Park Hotel. Wong was in charge of preliminary classification and distribution of patients at Ruttonjee Hospital, Wanchai on April 30th. The in-coming patient was a male foreigner without a HKSAR identity card. She asked the patient a few questions and learned that the latter came from Mexico and at the same time by her first instinct suspected that the latter might have suffered from the suspected swine influenza. She told her colleagues to wear protective clothes and masks and kept the patient who was really cooperative in a designated area with a surgical mask on.

The nurse was quite nervous at first with a fast pumping heart because if she was infected, the worse case would lead to death. She calmed herself down and handled the case with a young doctor, Dr. Hon. This doctor examined the patient and said that the latter had no fever, but he was certain that the patient was not feeling well. He informed other doctors and in a matter of 45 minutes, the patient was sent to a ward for isolation. It was lucky that these hospital personnels requested the patient to stay in the hospital for further check-up and observation.










Finally the patient was found to have been infected by H1N1 Type A Influenza and the whole lot of people living and working at Metro Park Hotel had to be quarantined on May 1st for a week. Miss Wong had made a wise decision at the frontline to keep everybody at the hospital on alert and stopped a widespread of the disease over the territory of Hong Kong.