Learning from SARS experience
THE SARS outbreak of 2003 put Hong Kong on the frontline of a global health crisis — but the city’s ultimately successful war on the virus offers lessons for those now battling Ebola. The flu-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) infected 1,800 people and took 299 lives in the southern Chinese city. Panic spread, emptying usually busy streets and restaurants and causing the property market to dive.
But swift moves to quarantine at-risk residents brought the outbreak under control, while transforming long-term attitudes to disease and streamlining the city’s alert and response systems.
Eleven years later, the legacy of SARS can still be seen every day in Hong Kong. Many residents don surgical masks at the first signs of a common cold; disinfectant dispensers are dotted around buildings, and signs next to elevator buttons boast of hourly sterilization.
Hong Kong hospitals now feature emergency isolation rooms, while travelers must pass through temperature scanners at the borders.
Taking no chances in one of the world’s most densely-populated cities, authorities set up a government body to coordinate the response to similar crises in the future. Since then, Asia’s mechanisms for dealing with infectious disease have been tested several times.
Experts say the experience of dealing with these viruses stands Asia in generally good stead should it face an outbreak of Ebola, which has yet to make it to the continent. The tropical virus has claimed almost 5,000 lives so far, the vast majority of them in West Africa.
Quarantine drills have been held from China and Hong Kong to Singapore and the Philippines, while many Asian countries have tightened airport screening processes. Experts stress some nations are better positioned than others to deal with an outbreak, and warn that no detection system is foolproof. Ebola does not always manifest itself in the form of a fever, for instance — so someone carrying the virus could pass undetected through even the most high-tech of airport temperature scanners. Experts have pointed to China as potentially vulnerable to an Ebola outbreak. Beijing has massively expanded its diplomatic and commercial efforts in Africa in recent years, seeking resources to drive its economy. Now Africa’s largest trading partner, thousands of workers travel between the two every year.
Malik Peiris, a Hong Kong-based expert who played a key role in identifying SARS, highlighted the cities of Beijing, Wuhan and Guangzhou as key destinations for West African business travelers.
China was heavily criticized for its initial response to the SARS outbreak, accused of covering up reported infections. But Peiris said Chinese authorities learned from SARS that transparency is key when it comes to a public health scare.