The public will know in a week or two if the current summer flu season has peaked, according to a respiratory health expert.

There have been 14 severe paediatric cases so far since the school year started, one of which was fatal.

The virus has also claimed the lives of 145 elderly aged 65 or above.

David Hui, professor of respiratory medicine at Chinese University, told a Commercial Radio programme on Saturday that the H3N2 virus is now the dominant strain, instead of the H1N1 virus in 2024-25.

He said flu cases are still on the rise.

"At the moment, we are still at the peak," Hui said.

"We don't know whether we have reached the maximum peak.

"We need another one or two weeks to find out whether we have reached the peak.

"I think the summer influenza season will go on much longer, and there is some chance that it may even merge with the winter outbreak."

Once the flu season reaches the peak, Hui said, it will take at least six weeks for the number of infections to decline.

Even though the latest data from the Centre for Health Protection showed that the infection rate for flu dropped two percentage points to 11.8 percent between October 12 and 18 from a week before that, Hui said, outbreaks in schools and hospital admission rates are increasing.

This was partly because the city's latest seasonal influenza vaccination programme only kicked off in late September and children had just returned to class after the summer break.

Hui called on the public to get inoculated as soon as possible, even if they had received a jab in the previous flu season.