Hong Kong is experiencing a prolonged summer flu season that shows no clear sign of abating, Centre for Health Protection controller Edwin Tsui said on Thursday.

He said the flu season has already entered its 16th week.

"We roughly ended last year's flu season around week 18," Tsui said on an RTHK radio programme.

"Today, we are already nearly 16 weeks into the flu season and still see no clear downward trend, so I expect this year's summer flu season will be longer than last year's."

Tsui said the prolonged season is linked to a shift in dominant virus strains, with influenza A H3 viruses dominating from the end of June before being replaced by H1 viruses in August.

The latest figures show 25 children have been hospitalised in intensive care or died this year from severe flu, with more than 80 percent either unvaccinated or having chronic illnesses.

Two children have died including a 12-year-old girl who passed away on Tuesday.

Among adults, 841 have been admitted to intensive care or died – a sharp rise from 490 in 2025.

Tsui said the proportion of respiratory samples testing positive for flu over the past month ranged from 10 to 12 percent – nearly double the baseline.

Hospitalisation rates stood at 0.4 to 0.7 per 10,000 population, two to three times the benchmark, indicating very high flu activity.

"The flu outbreak this year is actually not milder than last year's. Firstly, I hope everyone, the public, pays attention and does not underestimate the flu as being a very simple disease," Tsui stressed.

He also found it worrying that there had been a year-on-year drop in the flu vaccination rate.

The flu vaccination programme launched last month, Tsui pointed out, had seen more than 900,000 doses administered so far – a 10 percent drop compared with the same period last year.

Vaccination rates fell across all age groups, with the 2-to-5 and 6-to-11 age brackets seeing a decline of nearly five percentage points, while community elderly vaccination rates fell by 1.8 percentage points.



Edited by Edmond Fong