Statistics

Sentinel Surveillance of Infectious Diseases at Residential Care Homes for the Elderly (RCHEs)

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health (DH) has established several surveillance systems in Hong Kong to monitor communicable disease activity at the community and public and private healthcare facilities. With the participation of different partners, CHP will have a more comprehensive picture of the situation of communicable diseases. The sentinel surveillance system based at RCHE is one of the surveillance systems.

This weekly update outlines the data provided by RCHEs participating in the "Sentinel Surveillance of Infectious Diseases at Residential Care Homes for the Elderly". This update aims at informing the public of community-wide trends of infectious disease based on inference from the collected data, and does not represent the situation at any particular RCHE or geographic area.

I. Weekly Overview

Week 13 (23/3 – 29/3)
According to the recent data reported by sentinel RCHEs: - The activity of fever was at a high level; - The activity of vomiting has increased.

Year 2025	Week 13	Week 12	Week 11	Week 10
Surveillance period	23/3 - 29/3	16/3 - 22/3	9/3 - 15/3	2/3 - 8/3
Number of elderly (RCHEs) under surveillance	5482(47)	6242(50)	6099(50)	5592(47)
Average number of elderly with fever per day (per 1000 elderly)	1.54	1.26	0.77	0.84
Average number of elderly with acute diarrhoea per day (per 1000 elderly)	0.05	0.16	0.09	0.15
Average number of elderly with vomiting per day (per 1000 elderly)	0.63	0.34	0.42	0.18

Remark: The CHP of DH monitors the overall activity of common infectious diseases through a series of surveillance systems. The overall activity of acute gastroenteritis was at a high level.

II. Surveillance of Fever symptom

Weekly chart for occurrence of fever in sentinel RCHE, 2024-2025. The activity of fever in week 13 was at high level.

III. Surveillance of Acute diarrhoea symptom

Weekly chart for occurrence of acute diarrhoea in sentinel RCHE, 2024-2025. The activity of acute diarrhoea in week 13 was at baseline level.

IV. Surveillance of Vomiting symptom

Weekly chart for occurrence of vomiting in sentinel RCHE, 2024-2025. The activity of vomiting in week 13 has increased.

Methodology

Sentinel RCHEs record the number of elderly with fever, acute diarrhoea and vomiting on each day, and then send the data to the CHP on weekly basis.
The CHP calculates the average number of elderly with each symptom by dividing the total number of elderly having the corresponding symptoms by the total number of elderly in all data submitting RCHEs.

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