Word: amoy
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...still unclear. In mid-March, Hong Kong officials thought they knew how to control the epidemic. Since SARS seemed to require close contact with a victim, anyone suspected of infection was quarantined, and doctors and nurses were careful to wear protective clothing when dealing with patients. Then came Amoy Gardens. Clusters of cases began proliferating in the giant, 33-floor apartment towers in Hong Kong. Ultimately, more than 300 residents of the complex came down with SARS (at least 15 have died), even though many of them seemed to have had no direct contact with one another...
...jongg, Ann Kong believes, that finally put her over the edge. Living just a few blocks from Amoy Gardens, she was already nervous about SARS. But the reality didn't hit her until she arrived at her brother's home for the family's weekly mah-jongg game. Everyone had to wear slippers, and there was a designated "shoe area" to prevent footwear from contaminating the flat. The usually raucous pregame lunch was silent?the 10-person group had agreed not to talk to avoid spitting on one another and the food. Kong's brother wiped the mah-jongg tiles...
...obsessive swabbing won't help if your flat is a viral highway. The government announced Thursday that the Amoy Gardens outbreak, which infected 321 residents, was due in part to a faulty plumbing system. Virus-infected sewage droplets were sucked up through dry U-pipes that lead to residents' bathrooms, contaminating their apartments. The lesson? Always make sure your U-pipes are filled with water?and pour some of that bleach solution in there for good measure...
...steely will to persevere in a city the World Health Organization (WHO) has deemed unsafe for nonessential visits. Even the Stones, grizzled human petri dishes that they are, were frightened away by the very environment you call home. At the moment, despite the Health Department's explanation of the Amoy Gardens outbreak, the WHO shows no signs of lifting its travel advisory. But even as we mope along with our swabs and bleach solutions and top-off our U-pipes, a flicker of hope appears in the daily infection numbers we regard like a cabalistic talisman. Last Friday marked...
Still, while the number of new cases in such hot spots as Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam finally began to drop last week, nobody is prepared to say that this outbreak is even close to being over, especially considering that many residents of Hong Kong's Amoy Gardens apartments fled before officials could arrive to take them into quarantine. "I don't want to give anybody a false expectation that this is under control," says Ostroff. "This is still a very fluid situation...