Sars probe at Metropole not too late, official insists

The decision to launch an investigation into the Metropole Hotel in Mongkok three weeks after Hong Kong's index patient for Sars had spread the virus there, triggering a global outbreak, was 'reasonable and not too late', a senior health official said yesterday.

Thomas Tsang Ho-fai, a consultant in community medicine at the Department of Health, told a Legislative Council hearing yesterday that the department had not started to trace guests who stayed at the hotel until March 14.

This was three weeks after the 'patient zero', Liu Jianlun, a medical professor from Guangzhou, stayed overnight at the hotel on February 21, where he was taken ill, and infected at least 13 tourists from various countries including Singapore and Canada.

The doctor, 64, was admitted to Kwong Wah Hospital the next day. He died at the hospital on March 4.

Democratic Party legislator Martin Lee Chu-ming accused the department of being too slow in carrying out its investigation.

But Dr Tsang said: 'In the context of epidemiology, doctors seldom link the diseases which are transmitted through contact to the environment.

'The few exceptional diseases are the link between legionnaires' disease and water storage tanks.