brickboy

This is extracted from an email sent overnight to my sister from her friend out there, who's a senior officer in the Hong Kong Police. Things seem to be improving, but my sis is now going to Oz via an alternative route.

"The number of cases here is dropping pretty rapidly. We only had 20 new cases today.

"The bad news is the WHO have warned people to stay away. The tourist trade has just gone through the floor. Also on April 1st some bright 14 yr old kid hacked into the web site of a leading local newspaper and posted an article stating the Government
was about to close Hong Kong and declare martial law.

"Within 1 hour we had a run on the supermarkets with everything taken. Awesome to watch. Fighting cases and general mayhem resulted.

"The Government had its act together this time and texted the entire population through their mobiles telling them it was a false story. Clever move. So, by evening some calm had returned although things are still pretty tense.

"Some sense of reality is coming back today and hopefully we can get through the weekend without too much trouble. The schools are now closed until 22 April.

"The breakout in one building that produced most of the cases is being attributed to an infected person either ****ting or pissing in the water tank - as you do! That's the theory. It does not appear to be airborne - thank god!"

MarkO

Hmmm. Check the WHO website - it doesn't seem to be playing down the risk now. Quite the opposite.

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

Brickboy are you sure about your source???

The only reason I ask is that I spoke to my parent this morning who are in Hong Kong!

Lets put this into perspective. My parents live in the New Terrories near bottom of South East China. There have been no reported cases in this area! The concentration seems to be Hong Kong island.

Live out there at the moment is more cautious, rather than fearful. People are avoiding large cities and remaining in their villages. No rampaging in the local supermarkets or localised riots!

As a side issue, my father was in hospital before Christmas with a lung infection, which is now suspected to be the virus before it mutated! Scary stuff really, when you now hear the news!

In Hong Kong there have been 708 cases and 16 deaths due to this, out of a population of 7.5 million.

If there were the same percentages in the UK for example, with population roughly 7.5 times larger, it would be 5310 cases with 120 deaths. Whichever way you look at it, it's not good!!

brickboy

Andy, 100% sure.

I know the "mate of my sister" thing sounds dubious, but this is the exception that proves the rule .... the guy knows what he's talking about. Obviously I can't name him.

Panic buying may well have been very localised -- he's smack in the centre of Hong Kong island.

He's sent his kids back to the UK to stay with his parents for the duration, as beat officers in his command have gone down with SARS. His point is that it seems to be plateauing, rather than going out of control.

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

To be honest, I can understand it if he is on the island!!

clarence

The main concentration of cases are not in HK Island, but in Eastern Kowloon & Eastern New Teritorries.
The 1st outbreak came from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Shatin, numerous health workers in ward 8A contracted the disease. They got infected by a virus-carrier patient who was there for another disease (kidney or liver). This patient is also the prime suspect for the outbreak in block E of Amoy Gardens, where he went there several times visiting relatives before he was admitted to hospital. Most patients in this outbreak have fully recovered.
The 2nd outbreak was caused by a Mainland Chinese Doctor, who had SARS whilst in China & visited HK to seek treatment. He stayed in the 9th floor of Hotel Metropole. Consequently, some people who stayed there or visited that floor got infected by him. I think he was the 1st SARS death in HK. Other patients have recovered.
The 3rd outbreak is the infamous Amoy Gardens block E. This outbreak is probably caused by the same person who caused the 1st outbreak. Cases here concentrated on mid & high floors of block E, & only on the same 2 units of each floor (each floor has I think 8 units in total). They are still investigating the propagation medium in this outbreak, one of the possibilities is leaky sewage drains. A large proportion of all SARS cases in HK so far are from this outbreak.
All other miscellaneous cases are those who had close contact with virus carriers.
The 14yr kid spread rumours abt HK being quarantined, & so caused some panic buying among those less well-informed. HK was last quarantined in 1986 due to a Cholera outbreak (I think less than 10 cases in total that time).
BTW, China still refuses to acknowledge the fact that SARS originated there, & it took them months to admit & seek help from WHO (1st case was Nov 2002). Some officials there still don't agree with WHO's findings, & claim to have the epidemic under control. They have also grossly under report the number of cases & deaths. The reason why HK is so badly affected is cos China covered up this epidemic, & so HK was not prepared for this. I just hope that after this is all finished, the HK government won't adopt the Mainland practice of only reporting good news, & never bad news (a very Communist mindset), and remain as transparent as before. Recently, an ex-official from Mainland criticised the HK press of making a fuss over SARS. This remark was rebuffed by the Chief Secretary of HK, & was widely criticised by the press here.
New cases of SARS in HK seems to be declining this past 2 days, from a daily increase of around 80 cases to abt 20-30 for the past 2 days.