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ACT III

ON March 16, when the WHO put out a rare travel advisory calling Sars a global threat, more than 215 cases outside China had already been reported.

The following day, WHO officials in Beijing announced that a new team of specialists would be arriving in China within days to review the work done by Chinese doctors and recommend a course of action.

Ms Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, fretted publicly that this may well become like the 1918 influenza pandemic which devastated the whole world.

After all, cases had appeared in Germany, Canada, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taipei, Brunei and Japan, while suspected cases were surfacing in Malaysia, Australia, Britain, the United States as well as various other European countries.

By March 19, things were looking really bleak: five out of the 145 Sars patients in Hongkong had died.

Then a breakthrough.

Feverish detective work by Hongkong epidemiologists led them to pin down the source to the mainland professor whose putative sneeze in the ninth-floor lift lobby was being heard around the world: All local victims had either visited or stayed on the hotel's ninth floor between Feb 12 and March 2.

As the Hongkong Department of Health announced its extraordinary findings, journalists swarmed the Metropole while panicking guests fled Hotel Virus.

The health officials took pains to point out that not all 80 guests on the ninth floor when the sick doctor was there from Feb 21 to 22 had been infected, that the only common link was the lift lobby, and that there was no evidence the virus was still active in the hotel since the period during which it spreads (its incubation period) appeared to be relatively short - two to seven days.

The ninth floor had been closed for sterilisation but the Hongkong media was not going to be denied its field day.

Flustered Metropole staff - none of its 200-300 workers have been infected - appealled unsuccessfully to reporters not to harass hotel guests who were checking out of the hotel with face masks on.

The same day, the Chinese professor's brother-in-law died, becoming the sixth Sars death in Hongkong.

Most cases had involved health-care workers and relatives who had close contact with victims, so the first thought was that Sars might be a virulent variant of the influenza virus. Yet its spread to the hotel guests did not fit the flu pattern.

On March 19, a research team from the Chinese University of Hongkong and the Prince of Wales Hospital announced that they had identified the bug. It was a paramyxovirus, they said.

While corroborating the findings, German and Singaporean authorities cautioned that proving it was indeed the agent causing Sars would take more time.

CURTAIN CALL?

PARAMYXOVIRUSES form a large virus family whose members cause mild illnesses in adult humans, such as mumps, measles and parainfluenza, and childhood croup, but also various diseases in animals such as bats, pigs, horses and seals as well as distemper in dogs.

This is also the fastest-growing group of viruses, with new members being discovered ever so frequently.

One newly discovered strain was linked to the equine morbillivirus, or Hendra virus, which killed a Brisbane horse trainer in 1994.

Another new variant, Nipah, transmitted from pigs to humans but not from humans to humans, killed 105 Malaysian farmers in late 1998 and early 1999.

New viruses emerge when an intermediate host, such as a pig, gets infected by both human and animal viruses at the same time.
Many epidemics in recorded history began in bird populations in southern China, where many communities practise both pig and duck farming.

The poor hygiene and crowded conditions with rural folks living in close proximity to livestock, particularly poultry and pigs that carry a rich brew of parasites and viruses, make it easier for germs to jump from animal to human.

With modern air travel, Sars rages on unabated. Among Singaporeans, 44 people have been infected, the most dramatic being Dr Leong Hoe Nam, 32, the infectious diseases specialist who had to be pulled off a flight in Frankfurt to be quarantined with his pregnant wife and mother-in-law.

The bug has taken an economic toll: Several countries have issued warnings against travel to Guangdong, Hongkong and Hanoi.

Singapore Airlines is expected to cut back on its flights to Hongkong and parts of China.

More than this, however, is the toll on the human spirit this latest scare has heaped on to existing fears. The tiny bug, like terrorism and war, is potentially a weapon of mass hysteria - and a lethal one at that.