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Seven victims of mystery pneumonia stayed on same floor of Hong Kong hotel
CBC ^
| 03-19-03
| Margret Wong
Posted on 03/19/2003 11:07:19 AM PST by 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.
TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; hongkong; metropolehotel; patientzero; sars; tinfoil
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To: Mother Abigail
Better they should have stayed in beds.....
21
posted on
03/19/2003 11:50:20 AM PST
by
tracer
(/b>)
To: CathyRyan
becase = because
To: Mother Abigail
To: CathyRyan
To: VRWC_minion
I just had a thought about sickly Chinese factory workers coughing and sneezing on the assembly line, wrapping up all those germs in boxes and plastic and sending them on their way to Wal-Mart.
25
posted on
03/19/2003 12:01:14 PM PST
by
Pipe Dog
To: Mother Abigail
Airborne! Yikes!
To: CathyRyan
We don't know if any of the cleaning crew have been affected. What are they odds they all got it from the elevator buttons on that floor (But no one else contacted it from the elevator buttons on the interior of the elevator?...AIRBORNE.)
To: CathyRyan
Maybe the cleaning crew for that floor brought it in.
28
posted on
03/19/2003 12:11:56 PM PST
by
RLC
To: CathyRyan
"The staff would have been explosed more than a guest would if it were air. Curious."
Perhaps the air in the hallway isn't circulated and the heat/CA in each room has its own contained air flow unit with an external vent option. Many motel chains have a similar set up. That way if the heating/cooling breaks down it doesn't affect all the rooms.
29
posted on
03/19/2003 12:15:19 PM PST
by
Domestic Church
(AMDG...the cleaning crew must have been exposed too.)
To: Paleo Conservative; Mother Abigail
The hotel story is interesting, alright.
There was a new paramyxovirus of horses in Australia in 1994 that incidentally killed a few humans.
That a novel paramyxovirus would evolve in Southern China is not at all surprising (what took so long?). Other paramyxoviruses are quite contagious, as this one also appears to be. I wonder about the air-handling in the hotel.
My index of suspicion for BT is very, very low.
To: Domestic Church
None of the 200 to 300 workers at the hotel has become ill
To: Domestic Church
With that set up would the air from one roon flow to the next room?
To: RLC
None of the 200 to 300 workers at the hotel has become ill. Would you have a cleaning crew for just one floor? Typhoid Mary?
To: Mother Abigail
What about intentional introduction to that floor, such as coating a doorknob/elevator button/etc.? Is it possible an act like that could occur and infect guests, say applied in the evening, but losing its potency over a short period time, thus explaining why no staff were infected? Similarly perhaps an aerosol release that affected persons who came in contact with its limited time of potency?
To: VRWC_minion
Thats thinking outside the box..
LOL
To: aristeides
re: 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. )))
"bears repeating" bump
36
posted on
03/19/2003 2:47:57 PM PST
by
Mamzelle
To: CathyRyan
However it is a common practice to assign housekeepers their own floor...
To: CathyRyan
Maybe the one guest was infected and the staff passed the virus around......cross contamination.
38
posted on
03/19/2003 2:53:42 PM PST
by
Morrigan
To: CathyRyan
I just had another thought....could it be possible to carry the virus but not be infected by it?
39
posted on
03/19/2003 2:55:17 PM PST
by
Morrigan
To: CathyRyan
"None of the 200 to 300 workers at the hotel has become ill"
I have a hard time believing that.
40
posted on
03/19/2003 3:11:11 PM PST
by
Domestic Church
(AMDG...the cleaning crew must have been exposed too.)
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