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| Several elements spark Amoy Gardens SARS outbreak: WHO |
| CCTV.COM 2003-05-16 17:05:31 |
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Simultaneous environmental and health events contributed to the spread of SARS in a Hong Kong residential estate, a World Health Organization （WHO） environmental health team said in Hong Kong Friday.
The conclusions in the WHO report are of "no big difference" from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region （SAR） government's findings on SARS outbreak in late March in Block E of Amoy Gardens, said the team leader Heinz Feldmann.
Feldmann noted that at the time of the outbreak, the floor drain traps in many apartments seemed to have dried out and did not contain water for long periods. Without this seal, the traps became an open connection to the soil pipe.
Moreover, exhaust fans installed in some bathrooms were running with the door closed and droplets could have been drawn from the soil stack into the bathroom.
The running exhaust fans could have also transported droplets present or generated in the bathroom into the light well, resulting in contaminated air encountering an open window and then entering apartments even several floors away from the source.
Flush water was shut down for 16 hours starting in the evening of March 21 to fix a break of a flush water pipe serving unit 8 of Block E. This probably decreased the flow in the soil stack. Bucket flushing would have increased the generation of droplets in the bathroom.
Regarding to the unusual cluster of SARS cases occurred at Amoy Gardens, where one SARS patient visited his relatives there before more than 300 residents falling ill, the SAR government invited the WHO to send a team of environmental experts to assess what might have happened, following the government's own review.
The physical condition of the Amoy Gardens structure is generally good and meets international standards, Feldmann said, adding that existing plumbing systems meet the needs to contain waste within piping, as long as it is operated in line with the design, according to the WHO expert.
The WHO team's exhaustive testing of Amoy Gardens found no SARS virus there, Feldmann said.
The WHO team, since their arrival on April 27, also undertook investigations at the Metropole Hotel, where one of Hong Kong's index patients once resided.
"The environmental team concluded at the Metropole there was an incident in the hallway of Floor 9 where the person with SARS contaminated people on the floor by some sort of close contact or secreted materials shed by the person," Feldmann said. The four members of the environmental team, all from Health Canada, have combined expertise in mechanical ventilation, plumbing systems, airborne monitoring and sampling. The WHO had earlier cited the SARS outbreak at Amoy Gardens as one of the key reasons for issuing a travel advisory urging people to avoid Hong Kong.
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Editor: Inner Wu Source:Xinhua
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