At least six of the early victims of the mysterious flu-like disease that has set off a global alert appear to have caught it from a sick doctor in a Hong Kong hotel – a revelation that a top U.S. official called a “breakthrough.”
Health officials in Hong Kong yesterday said a doctor from China’s Guangdong province stayed at the Metropole Hotel in the Kowloon district before he died – and six other people who also stayed there became infected. The hotel has sealed off its ninth floor where the Chinese doctor stayed sometime between Feb. 12 and March 2.
The new clue came as officials for the first time listed 11 people in the United States, who have all traveled to Asia, as having suspected cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
“The 11 people we’re talking about have a travel history, fever and respiratory symptoms that make them fall into a . . . definition for a suspect case,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The ailment has affected 264 people worldwide and claimed at least nine lives.
In Washington, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson called the news about the hotel in Hong Kong “a breakthrough we haven’t had before.”
“We have been able to track most of the individuals that have died and a good share of the cases have come to this one particular hotel in Hong Kong,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what that means except that it appears that there’s something going on at that particular hotel or . . . somebody . . . came to that hotel from the Guangdong province where we think the illness started . . .”
Thompson added that the Bush administration wants to spend $100 million to get ready for a possible flu outbreak.
The SARS cases “remind us all of the potential danger posed by emerging infectious diseases, especially a possible new influenza strain,” Thompson said.