tantric_yogi
April 10th, 2003, 09:28 PM
This story starts Feb 21st when Mr. Liu Jianlun went to Hong Kong to attend a wedding. I wonder if Chinesse will ever let the world know events behind this story before Feb 21st ...
Mr. Liu Jianlun went to Hong Kong to attend a wedding -- and brought to the bustling former British colony a virus that would wreak havoc on the lives of hundreds of people and the economies of several Asian nations.
A 64-year-old professor of nephrology at Zhongshan University, Liu traveled from his home in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, where he worked part-time at a hospital.
On Feb. 21 he stayed in Room 911 of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong's Kowloon district. By the time he left the hotel, he had unknowingly infected six people on the ninth floor.
Experts believe that Liu could have shared an elevator with these six people he did not even know, or could have come in close contact with them at the lobby.
The next day a very sick Liu checked into the Kwong Wah Hospital. He was too sick to attend the wedding.
Reports said he told the hospital staff he was highly infectious and demanded that he be given a mask.
He said they should put him in an isolation ward behind double-sealed doors with reduced air pressure so germs could not get out. He told doctors his medical history, and subsequently died.
According to what Liu told the doctors, he had treated sick people in Guangdong, where a still unknown and unnamed ailment had been raging since November. Hundreds of people were getting sick, many were dying.
The ailment would later be called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and Liu would be dubbed SARS' "patient zero" -- the one believed to have sparked the outbreak in Hong Kong.
Before Hong Kong could get more information from Guangdong authorities and alarm bells could be sounded, the SARS virus was already spreading elsewhere.
One of the people Liu infected was Johnny Chen, 48, an American businessman who worked for an import-export company.
Chen left Hong Kong for Vietnam on Feb. 24. He fell ill and was admitted to a hospital there on Feb. 26, five days after his encounter with Liu.
He was transferred to a Hong Kong hospital where he died on March 13.
But like Liu who died in Hong Kong on March 4, Chen had by then infected many other people in Vietnam and in the Hong Kong hospital where he was transferred.
At least 61 people contracted SARS, most of them medical staff at the hospital where he was treated. Three medical personnel died, including Dr. Carlo Urbani, a World Health Organization expert in communicable diseases who identified the SARS outbreak after studying Chen in Hanoi.
Urbani died in Thailand.
Another person infected by Liu was Kwan Sui-chu, who traveled with her husband to Hong Kong from Canada to visit their son.
Husband and wife stayed at the Metropole, using a five-night free stay voucher given by the airline they took. On Feb. 23 they went home to Toronto.
On Feb. 26 Kwan started feeling ill. When her condition took a turn for the worse, her husband, three children, daughter-in-law and grandchildren hovered over her sickbed.
She died at home and was buried without an autopsy. She was 78 and a diabetic -- there was no reason to think she had any other disease.
On March 5 Kwan's son Tse Chi Kwai, 44, his wife and their baby went to their family doctor complaining of a respiratory ailment. The next day Tse went to the Scarborough Grace Hospital, the medical institution that would later become known as Canada's epicenter of the virus.
Doctors thought Tse had ordinary pneumonia. He was taken to the emergency room and put beside a 76-year-old man afflicted by an unsteady heartbeat.
Three days later Tse was isolated at the hospital's ICU. Doctors thought he had tuberculosis.
The medical staff who attended to him used personal protection equipment; members of his family were told to put on masks when they came to visit.
And doctors continued searching for a more accurate diagnosis of his disease.
Tse died on March 12, the same day the WHO raised a global alert on atypical pneumonia cases.
Four days later the patient who lay beside Tse in the emergency room went back to the hospital. He had fever and was short of breath.
Hospital staff donned masks and the man was taken to an isolation room. He died on March 22. It turned out later his source of infection was Tse.
In the meantime, medical staff who had contact with Tse and his family started falling ill -- and infecting their own families at home.
The hospital was later forced to close its doors to new patients and to quarantine medical staff and their families.
Back in Hong Kong, a 26-year-old resident who visited his friend at the Metropole's ninth floor started feeling sick on Feb. 24, three days after his encounter with Liu.
The man was treated at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Like Tse, this man spread the disease to medical staff, who in turn infected their families.
Liu also infected three Singaporean women who stayed at the Metropole's ninth floor and eventually returned to Singapore.
Two of the three did not infect anyone. The third, Esther Mok, infected 20 people in five days -- among them her father and a pastor who visited her at the hospital. Both have since died. She also infected her mother, who later died.
Mok, who has been linked to 100 SARS infections in Singapore, is still in the hospital.
Like Tse in Canada and Chen in Vietnam, she spread the virus mostly to hospital staff who also infected their own families.
The virus has since spread, and today 20 countries have reported SARS cases.
But what is baffling is that the SARS virus is deadly and highly infectious to some people, yet does not even bother others.
And some SARS patients, like Mok, transmit the virus more efficiently than others can. They are called "super spreaders."
A health-conscious man who ran 20 km each weekend and who did not smoke or drink was severely infected when he visited an uncle staying at the Metropole. The uncle, who had fever and a cough, also played mahjong with some friends, none of whom were infected.
And none of the Metropole employees got sick.
cut/paste
Mr. Liu Jianlun went to Hong Kong to attend a wedding -- and brought to the bustling former British colony a virus that would wreak havoc on the lives of hundreds of people and the economies of several Asian nations.
A 64-year-old professor of nephrology at Zhongshan University, Liu traveled from his home in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, where he worked part-time at a hospital.
On Feb. 21 he stayed in Room 911 of the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong's Kowloon district. By the time he left the hotel, he had unknowingly infected six people on the ninth floor.
Experts believe that Liu could have shared an elevator with these six people he did not even know, or could have come in close contact with them at the lobby.
The next day a very sick Liu checked into the Kwong Wah Hospital. He was too sick to attend the wedding.
Reports said he told the hospital staff he was highly infectious and demanded that he be given a mask.
He said they should put him in an isolation ward behind double-sealed doors with reduced air pressure so germs could not get out. He told doctors his medical history, and subsequently died.
According to what Liu told the doctors, he had treated sick people in Guangdong, where a still unknown and unnamed ailment had been raging since November. Hundreds of people were getting sick, many were dying.
The ailment would later be called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, and Liu would be dubbed SARS' "patient zero" -- the one believed to have sparked the outbreak in Hong Kong.
Before Hong Kong could get more information from Guangdong authorities and alarm bells could be sounded, the SARS virus was already spreading elsewhere.
One of the people Liu infected was Johnny Chen, 48, an American businessman who worked for an import-export company.
Chen left Hong Kong for Vietnam on Feb. 24. He fell ill and was admitted to a hospital there on Feb. 26, five days after his encounter with Liu.
He was transferred to a Hong Kong hospital where he died on March 13.
But like Liu who died in Hong Kong on March 4, Chen had by then infected many other people in Vietnam and in the Hong Kong hospital where he was transferred.
At least 61 people contracted SARS, most of them medical staff at the hospital where he was treated. Three medical personnel died, including Dr. Carlo Urbani, a World Health Organization expert in communicable diseases who identified the SARS outbreak after studying Chen in Hanoi.
Urbani died in Thailand.
Another person infected by Liu was Kwan Sui-chu, who traveled with her husband to Hong Kong from Canada to visit their son.
Husband and wife stayed at the Metropole, using a five-night free stay voucher given by the airline they took. On Feb. 23 they went home to Toronto.
On Feb. 26 Kwan started feeling ill. When her condition took a turn for the worse, her husband, three children, daughter-in-law and grandchildren hovered over her sickbed.
She died at home and was buried without an autopsy. She was 78 and a diabetic -- there was no reason to think she had any other disease.
On March 5 Kwan's son Tse Chi Kwai, 44, his wife and their baby went to their family doctor complaining of a respiratory ailment. The next day Tse went to the Scarborough Grace Hospital, the medical institution that would later become known as Canada's epicenter of the virus.
Doctors thought Tse had ordinary pneumonia. He was taken to the emergency room and put beside a 76-year-old man afflicted by an unsteady heartbeat.
Three days later Tse was isolated at the hospital's ICU. Doctors thought he had tuberculosis.
The medical staff who attended to him used personal protection equipment; members of his family were told to put on masks when they came to visit.
And doctors continued searching for a more accurate diagnosis of his disease.
Tse died on March 12, the same day the WHO raised a global alert on atypical pneumonia cases.
Four days later the patient who lay beside Tse in the emergency room went back to the hospital. He had fever and was short of breath.
Hospital staff donned masks and the man was taken to an isolation room. He died on March 22. It turned out later his source of infection was Tse.
In the meantime, medical staff who had contact with Tse and his family started falling ill -- and infecting their own families at home.
The hospital was later forced to close its doors to new patients and to quarantine medical staff and their families.
Back in Hong Kong, a 26-year-old resident who visited his friend at the Metropole's ninth floor started feeling sick on Feb. 24, three days after his encounter with Liu.
The man was treated at the Prince of Wales Hospital. Like Tse, this man spread the disease to medical staff, who in turn infected their families.
Liu also infected three Singaporean women who stayed at the Metropole's ninth floor and eventually returned to Singapore.
Two of the three did not infect anyone. The third, Esther Mok, infected 20 people in five days -- among them her father and a pastor who visited her at the hospital. Both have since died. She also infected her mother, who later died.
Mok, who has been linked to 100 SARS infections in Singapore, is still in the hospital.
Like Tse in Canada and Chen in Vietnam, she spread the virus mostly to hospital staff who also infected their own families.
The virus has since spread, and today 20 countries have reported SARS cases.
But what is baffling is that the SARS virus is deadly and highly infectious to some people, yet does not even bother others.
And some SARS patients, like Mok, transmit the virus more efficiently than others can. They are called "super spreaders."
A health-conscious man who ran 20 km each weekend and who did not smoke or drink was severely infected when he visited an uncle staying at the Metropole. The uncle, who had fever and a cough, also played mahjong with some friends, none of whom were infected.
And none of the Metropole employees got sick.
cut/paste