The arrival of the H1N1 flu in Hong Kong has brought a shiver to the city as it recalls the 2003 SARS outbreak, when fear of the mysterious killer turned the bustling metropolis into a virtual ghost town.
The first case of A(H1N1) in Asia was confirmed on Friday in a visitor from the virus’ Mexican epicenter, but even before that the hygiene mania of 2003 had returned.
Protective masks once again cover faces in restaurants and on public transport, cellophane has reappeared on lift buttons and shoppers have joined long checkout lines for bleach bottles to sterilize their homes.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Lily Lok, a risk management consultant, said the concerns sparked by the swine flu threat led her to recall a SARS-crisis moment when 100 masked students faced her in a lecture hall.
“As I walked into the hall, I saw a sea of white face masks. With no exception, everybody — including the lecturer — was wearing one,” she said.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed close to 300 people in Hong Kong, has left a heavy legacy in the city and visitors are often surprised that schoolchildren with just a slight cough happily don a face mask.
Public buildings are seldom without an easy-to-use disinfectant dispenser and the subway is plastered with tips about good personal hygiene.
The paranoia that dogged the city during SARS — when the WHO advised against any travel to the city — is still palpable for those who lived through it.
Paul Coffey, 30, who moved to Hong Kong the day SARS broke out, remembers witnessing the city’s bustling nightlife hub suddenly becoming completely deserted.
“My strangest recollection is of walking past Lan Kwai Fong one Saturday night and seeing that the main street was completely empty. And I mean that literally — not a soul in sight,” the Australian entrepreneur said.
Expat bankers shipped their families away and flights into Hong Kong were virtually empty.
But the outbreak was not without its lighter moments and many in the brand-obsessed city even saw the crisis as an opportunity to show off. One rich housewife was pictured wearing a HK$750 (US$97) Louis Vuitton-branded face mask, matching one worn by her poodle.
“The vision of the well-dressed man driving his brand new BMW, on his own, with all the windows wound up ... and wearing a face mask ... is one that shall live with me forever,” Coffey said.
Cleaners scrubbed every corner of the city — and the pavements are wonderfully clean to this day — while banks covered their ATM touchpads with a new cellophane sheet every 30 minutes to avoid contamination.
And although the government advised people to stay at home during the 2003 outbreak, Oscar Tan said he decided once to risk a night at a karaoke bar with a group of friends to kill the boredom.
“It was a funny scene of everybody singing through their face masks, with a microphone wrapped in layers of cellophane,” he said.
Housewife Amy Tso said she would always remember “1:99” — the bleach to water ratio that health officials recommended as anti-SARS cleaning solution — since she had followed the instruction diligently during the SARS period to sterilize her flat.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including