X-Message-Number: 21503
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: NYTimes: Hong Kong Reports Surge of Cases of Disease
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 21:51:29 -0800



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/30/international/asia/30INFE.html?ex=1049605200&en=803204ae7c7d94f3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Hong Kong Reports Surge of Cases of Disease
By KEITH BRADSHER


HONG KONG, March 29   Hong Kong health officials said tonight that 78 people 
had fallen sick with a mysterious respiratory illness in a single apartment 
complex over the last three days, and warned that the disease might be more 
easily transmitted than previously believed.

The new warning came as the World Health Organization announced in Geneva 
that the doctor who first identified the fast-spreading disease has himself 
died of it. The doctor, Carlo Urbani, 46, identified the outbreak of the 
severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, in an American businessman 
admitted to hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam, where Mr. Urbani was based.

In the new outbreaks in Hong Kong, a single person from the apartment block 
became ill a week ago after visiting a hospitalized brother who was being 
treated for SARS. Since then, dozens of other people from the same apartment 
complex had fallen ill with the disease, and health officials raised the 
possibility tonight that for so many people to be infected, the virus might 
be capable of staying suspended in the air in fairly small droplets, or 
might have changed in some way.

They had previously suggested that fairly large droplets emitted when 
someone sneezed or coughed had spread the disease.

"With such a major concentration in one place, we're extremely concerned," 
Dr. Thomas Tsang, the Health Department's medical consultant, said at a 
briefing tonight. "Anything is possible and we're not ruling anything out."

But World Health Organization officials were skeptical that the virus had 
mutated or that it was spreading by any means other than close personal 
contact with an infected individual. Epidemiologists have been able to trace 
how a high proportion of all carriers of the disease became infected, and 
the infections have consistently come from close contact, said Dick 
Thompson, a spokesman at W.H.O.'s headquarters in Geneva.

A medical investigator in Hong Kong said that while there had been large 
outbreaks in hospitals when health care workers were performing medical 
procedures that involved close contact with patients, it was a mystery how 
one person could infect so many in the community.

"Is he a very social guy or is there something else going on?" the 
investigator asked, adding that close contact with many people still 
appeared the most likely answer.

Another investigator said that labs had not yet compared virus samples from 
the apartment complex patients with samples from other SARS patients.

Hong Kong hospitals have been flooded with new SARS patients over the last 
three days even as other countries have been reporting few new cases. Hong 
Kong, which has followed less stringent quarantine procedures than many 
countries, had 51 new cases on Thursday, 58 on Friday and 45 today, raising 
the total here to 470.

According to W.H.O. statistics, Canada had eight new cases today, Singapore 
had three new cases and Switzerland had one. American doctors were 
investigating whether eight more people in the United States may have the 
disease.

The numbers here were so large partly because 22 people fell ill on Thursday 
at the Amoy Garden apartment complex on Thursday, 34 on Friday and 22 more 
today. The Hong Kong Health Department has set up a post at the complex to 
interview residents and monitor their health, but some residents have fled 
to stay elsewhere with friends and relatives, raising the fear that they may 
spread the disease.

An 83-year-old Hong Kong man with a history of heart trouble died of the 
disease this morning, bringing the death toll here to 12, all of them either 
elderly or with other medical complications. Hong Kong hospitals discharged 
18 recovered patients today, after discharging only 25 over the previous 
three weeks.









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