Seven victims of mystery pneumonia stayed on same floor of Hong Kong hotel

CBC ^ | 03-19-03 | Margret Wong

[Mother Abigail]

Seven victims of mystery pneumonia stayed on same floor of Hong Kong hotel

01:47 PM EST Mar 19

MARGARET WONG

HONG KONG (AP) - Seven people who came down with a mysterious form of pneumonia, including two who have died, spent time on the same floor of a Hong Kong hotel before the outbreak prompted a global alert, officials said Wednesday.

One was a 64-year-old medical professor from Guangzhou, China, who died in Hong Kong on March 4, and one was a 78-year-old woman from Toronto, who died after returning to Canada, according to a Hong Kong government spokeswoman.

The other visitors of the Metropole Hotel who became sick were three Singaporean women, two of them age 23 and one 33; a 72-year-old Canadian man; and a 26-year-old Hong Kong man who had gone to the hotel to see a friend, said Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the Hong Kong Health Department.

The people had no known connection with each other and had apparently visited the Metropole, on Hong Kong's Kowloon peninsula, in separate groups or alone, said the government spokeswoman, who agreed to be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity. They had all been on the hotel's ninth floor between Feb. 12 and March 2, Chan told a news conference.

As many as 11 people are believed to have died worldwide from severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, but the World Health Organization has not yet decided whether to include the Chinese professor and another victim on its official list.

Two people who died in Canada are on the WHO list but it was not immediately clear if the Toronto woman who visited the Metropole was one of them. None of the 200 to 300 workers at the hotel has become ill and although conditions seem safe there now, the ninth floor has been closed until it is sterilized, Chan said.

[Mother Abigail]

This is very odd. Hard to calculate a normal transmission vector from this information...

[pepsionice]

Does everyone notice that one of the folks is a med professor? Kinda makes one wonder what type of projects he was involved in. I bet he was a research type...wanna bet? The rest of these folks are vanella types...but the med guy....he's got a past to him. I bet his lab does unusual type experiments...for the Chinese government. Any bettors out there?

[Mother Abigail]

The paramyxo viruses are a family of germs that cause mumps, measles and various respiratory diseases, especially in children. Hong Kong medical experts said the strain responsible for Sars seemed to be a mutation in an existing paramyxo virus rather than a previously unknown species.

"The behaviour of the virus is very strange," said Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's secretary for health, welfare and food. He said the virus caused a severe illness because it triggered a strong response from the immune system.

There are no drugs with specific activity against paramyxo viruses. However K.Y. Yuen, a doctor at the University of Hong Kong, said patients were being treated with broad-spectrum anti-viral drugs such as ribavirin, as well as steroids to counteract the immune system's harmful response to the virus.

Experts at the World Health Organisation who are co-ordinating the global response to Sars, told a press conference on Wednesday that more research was still needed to pin down the precise strain of paramyxo virus responsible for Sars. "It is similar to seeing the shadow of someone you think you know but the face and the details will only become clear with further testing," said David Heymann, WHO head of communicable diseases.

[NautiNurse]

Sounds like Legionnaire's Disease.

The difficulty identifying the LD bug was because isolated from its environment, it would not reproduce. It required the proper conditions not found in a culture dish.

However, LD is not contagious between persons. SARS seems to be.

[aristeides]

Given the extent to which medical staff has gotten this disease, the med professor probably caught it treating somebody in Guangdong, where there was an outbreak of the disease in February.

[CathyRyan]

These people did not have close contact with each other. How did they become infected?

[Doc Savage]

Run! Run for your life....we're all going to die!!...Oh the humanity....Run.............!

[Mother Abigail]

Exactly my first thought.

[Mother Abigail]

All staff negative

[Judith Anne]

Legionnaire's was my first thought also.

[Mother Abigail]

The window of transmission seems to be almost three weeks.

Was he in the hotel for that long?

[Judith Anne]

I think I remember reading on one of the ProMed links that Legionnaire's was ruled out...that can be identified fairly quickly, iirc.

[CathyRyan]

If it was just one floor. Why not the other floors as well is well? If it were environmental. Water pipes leading to that one floor? The staff would have been explosed more than a guest would if it were air. Curious.

[CathyRyan]

But why would the guests have more contact than the staff?

[Paleo Conservative]

Ping!

[aristeides]

I wonder if this Canadian woman stayed at the hotel: SARS patient recovering .

[VRWC_minion]

Orgy ?

[CathyRyan]

Could not be some built in local immunity becase would not the hospital staff have that? I will shut up I am gabbling.