GUANGZHOU: Senior medics have warned the peak time for hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) is still to come after reporting a sharp rise in cases in Guangdong province over the last month.

No official figures have been released by the authorities as to the scale of the outbreak in provincial capital Guangzhou, as well as the cities of Dongguan, Shenzhen and Heyuan.

But Wang Ming, director of Guangzhou center for disease control (CDC), told China Daily yesterday: "From the beginning of this year to Feb 22, the city only had a dozen HFMD cases every week. But from the end of February to March, the number of cases increased sharply."