Sessional_Paper_1892 — Page 478

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6. By section 7 of Table (L) above referred to, it is provided that if a vessel arrives from a port or place where cholera or choleraic diarrhoea prevailed, or if there has been any case on board, or death therefrom, the vessel shall not be released from quarantine until three clear days shall have elapsed since the date of the vessel's departure or since any person had suffered from or died from such disease on board such vessel as the case may be.

7. By section 8 of the said regulations a vessel in the waters of the Colony having any case of contagious or infectious disease on board may be ordered to the quarantine anchorage; and the time of detention of any vessel in quarantine is entirely in the discretion of the Health Officer.

8. Ordinance 26 of 1891, section 25, which gives the Governor in Council power to make quarantine regulations, contemplates providing quarantine stations and enforcing the detention and seclusion of persons arriving in vessels subject to quarantine whether they are sick or not. But there is now no station to which passengers who are healthy or who are suspected of suffering from a communicable disease may be sent, or detained, and such persons, if detained at all, are confined to the vessel which is subjected to quarantine.

9. The two principal diseases against the importation of which precaution is now taken are cholera and small-pox, although the regulations include every disease which is either contagious or infectious. The regulation as to cholera, as already pointed out, directs that a vessel shall not be released from quarantine for three days after the sickness or death of a person on board. This might detain a vessel in quarantine for an indefinite period.

10. From the evidence before the Commission it appears that cholera is not communicable direct from person to person; that persons who are in good health on board a ship on which a case of cholera had occurred should either be allowed to go free at once, or, as a matter of precaution and on grounds of general policy, be detained for a short period under observation; and that persons who are suspected of being infected with cholera should either be taken out of the ship and placed under observation, or, if kept in the ship for observation, the period of detention, as in England, should not exceed 48 hours. The average number of suspected cases of cholera or small-pox during a year does not exceed ten.

11. It appears that the Chinese Authorities practically take no quarantine precautions against the introduction of contagious or infectious diseases, although there are some regulations in existence which may be proclaimed and put in force in the ports of Shanghai and Amoy. The measures taken to prevent ships of foreign construction from bringing disease into the Colony may therefore be rendered futile by the fact that the disease may be imported by the numerous passenger junks and other native craft which frequent the port from the mainland and which it is prac- tically impossible to bring under anything like strict sanitary control.

12. Small-pox appears to be endemic in South China and in Hongkong, and the Commission are of opinion that it is perfectly useless to keep in quarantine persons who are in good health simply because they have arrived in a ship where cases of small-pox have occurred or still exist.

13. As a precautionary measure, however, all persons on board a vessel in which cases of small-pox have occurred should be examined as to whether they had been re-vaccinated or are properly protected. If not re-vaccinated they should be asked to submit to that operation before being released, but refusal to comply would hardly constitute sufficient ground for their detention.

14. From the evidence of Mr. CoOPER it appears that, although much has still to be done in the way of drainage, great advances have been made in improving the sanitary state of the Colony since 1886, when the existing quarantine regula- tions were framed, for those under Ordinance 26 of 1891 are practically the same.