Official: No need for Hong Kong to become ‘mask city’ over flu   

香港流感爆发 官员：全城戴口罩或影响亲切接触

Ko Wing-man, Hong Kong's Secretary for Food and Health, speaks at a meeting on Feb 4, 2015. (Photo: Ming Pao Daily)

(ECNS) - Ko Wing-man, Hong Kong's Secretary for Food and Health, suggested at a meeting on Wednesday that only people in high-risk groups such as the elderly and the chronically ill should consider wearing masks.

His remarks followed discussions by the local legislature on whether all the residents in the city need to wear surgical masks as a severe outbreak of flu that has killed 118 people in two months.

It will create isolation in society if everyone wears a mask, the newspaper Ming Pao cited Ko as saying.

There have been questions about whether it's time to ask people to wear masks, like the SARS epidemic in 2003. But no firm conclusion has been reached.

Among the 118 victims, 91.5 percent were aged 65 or older.