Fears about SARS have disrupted flights, closed schools and sent people running for surgical masks, reports Anna Healy in Hong Kong, where the virus may have already peaked
There is a dangerous virus spreading through Hong Kong. It is NOT atypical pneumonia. It is panic. So wrote one local columnist, sick to death like many of us, not of SARS but of hysterical people running around the place in surgical masks and gloves.
Now local official notices are calling it SRS (Severe Respiratory Syndrome) not SARS. That sounds too much like Hong Kong's other name, the Special Administrative Region (SAR). Perish the thought anyone might think it originated here.
To date the territory has had 734 cases and 17 deaths. The epidemic is thought to have started last November in nearby southern China, but it was only last week that mainland authorities confessed to the 1200 cases and 30 deaths there since February. Meanwhile travellers were spreading the virus all over the globe.
Hong Kong, with seven million battery humans packed into a few square miles, is not great on crisis management. In the last major bird flu outbreak, millions of chickens were slaughtered in markets here and over the border. Without adequate means of disposal, the carcasses lay decaying in bags in the steaming heat, chewed open by rats and dogs, spreading even more diseases.
But wiping out the human population isn't feasible so everyone is playing it extra safe. First came the surgical masks, because the virus seems to be spread by coughing and sneezing. Offices handed them out to workers, only to discover that the most common model wasn't effective because of gaps round the edge. The price of 'safe' masks then shot up from a few dollars to HK$100 (about €16), and shops sold out.
In keeping with Hong Kong's national obsession with brand names, newspapers ran stories about Gucci rushing out a special designer version costing Hk$1600 (€160), only to discover it was a wind-up.
Meanwhile one of the original Hong Kong cases was traced to a kidney patient who, having been told he had ordinary flu, was allowed to go in and out of hospital for dialysis and to visit his friends.
Much of the continuing mass panic seems unnecessary now that it has become clear that outbreaks are "clustered", with most of the cases in specific places, namely three hospitals and one housing estate. At the Prince of Wales Hospital 17 medical students contracted the bug in one ward.
Amoy Gardens, a grim high-rise block of flats has more than 70 per cent of the local cases. Construction workers next door are thought to have spread the infection by urinating in the open with the wind doing the rest. After days of dithering and disinfecting, while residents complained of being left to die, those residents who hadn't already fled were moved this week to "isolation holiday camps." All schools are closed, leaving working parents struggling with childcare.
Don't worry about falling behind with studies, consoled the education secretary, your lessons are posted on the Internet. "Stay home, study on the web and stay healthy," say the public health adverts. Meanwhile the news reports show kids packed into amusement arcades playing fruit machines. So far 30 children have caught the virus but none has died.
In the panic it's easy to forget that this virus is only four per cent fatal, with the frail and already sick most at risk. In a city this size, there are hundreds of pneumonia sufferers at any time, of which several dozen have some form of atypical pneumonia.
By the end of the week, the epidemic seemed to have peaked, with new cases down from 60 on Monday to 26 on Thursday. But fear is winning over facts. Wearing a hot, uncomfortable mask today, I boarded an underground train, coughed once and cleared the carriage.
Worried expatriate parents have packed their kids off home, though a plane is probably one of the best places to catch SARS. Cathay Pacific bosses are probably seething but have to tolerate pilots turning up the fresh versus recycled air mix on flights, in spite of extra fuel costs. The airline objected lamely that pilots risked getting distracted by flashing lights when they switched the automatic air-conditioning system to manual.
Not that many people are flying. The airport reports flight cancellations running at 20 per cent. Surprisingly, restaurants are not empty, although diners are being given disposable wooden chopsticks in place of the usual white bone type and there's an extra pair for communal serving.
It's hard to find a lighter side to SARS but, on Tuesday, a 14-year-old schoolboy posted a bogus news item online that Hong Kong was about to be declared an infected port and borders would be closed. Most food is imported here so there was pandemonium, with shoppers cramming into supermarkets. Panic buying got so bad that trolleys jammed the aisles and fights broke out over packets of noodles. Few remembered that it was April 1st.