How to Find Current Disease Outbreak and Health Alert Information on chp.gov.hk

Updated

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) website, chp.gov.hk, is the Hong Kong government's public health information portal. To find current outbreak and health alert information, start from the site's homepage and look for its news, press release, and disease-specific sections; the site publishes outbreak notices and health alerts through these channels rather than in a single "alerts" feed. The steps below describe how to locate that information and what to expect.

Where health alerts and outbreak news appear

The CHP site organizes current information in a few recurring places:

  • Press releases / news announcements — the main channel for time-sensitive notices, including outbreak reports, health alerts, and public health advice.
  • Disease-specific pages — topic pages for individual diseases (for example, influenza, COVID-19, or foodborne illness) that carry situation updates and prevention guidance.
  • Outbreak or surveillance sections — pages that summarize current activity for notifiable or monitored diseases.
  • Travel health and health advice notices — alerts relevant to travellers and the general public.

Because the site is bilingual (Chinese and English), check that you are viewing the English version if that is your preference; some notices appear in both languages, and the language toggle is on the page.

Step-by-step: checking for current updates

  1. Open chp.gov.hk and go to the homepage.
  2. Scan the latest news or press release area for recent dated items. Outbreak and alert notices are typically titled with the disease or event and carry a publication date.
  3. Use the site search with a disease name (e.g., "influenza," "measles," "food poisoning") to pull up the relevant topic page and recent notices.
  4. Open the disease-specific page and look for a "latest situation," "situation update," or "surveillance" section.
  5. Check the date on every item. A page may exist for a disease without being recently updated; the publication date tells you whether the information is current.
  6. For travel-related alerts, check the travel health section before a trip.

Expected result: you should land on a dated notice or a disease page with a recent update. If the newest item is weeks or months old, treat the page as background information rather than a current alert.

Checking updates on a specific disease

  • Search the disease name from the homepage search box.
  • Prefer the official disease topic page over general news items, since the topic page consolidates guidance and links to recent notices.
  • Cross-check the press release list for the same disease to see the most recent official announcement.
  • Note that not every disease has a standing alert; some pages are reference material updated only when there is new activity.

Common sticking points

  • No single alert banner: there is no guarantee of a prominent "current alerts" banner on the homepage, so the press release list and search are the reliable routes.
  • Stale pages: a disease page can remain online long after its last update. Always confirm the date.
  • Language version: a notice visible in the Chinese version may not be mirrored immediately in English, or vice versa.
  • Terminology: official notices may use clinical or administrative titles (e.g., "notifiable disease," "surveillance") rather than the word "outbreak."

Practical tips

  • Bookmark the press release list and the disease page you monitor most often.
  • Check the publication date before acting on any guidance.
  • For urgent public health advice, follow the notice's stated instructions and contact details rather than relying on older pages.

The site does not present a single consolidated live alert feed, so the reliable method is to combine the press release list, site search, and disease-specific pages, and to verify currency by date.