How did our sophisticated city fall prey to a deadly visitor that crept across the border?
In winter 2002, when Guangzhou residents were boiling vinegar and clearing pharmacy shelves of flu medication, Hong Kong was still struggling towards economic recovery and remained unaware of a mysterious deadly disease about to creep into the city.
No one could ever have imagined that a modern city such as Hong Kong would be threatened by an infectious disease as frightening as the bubonic plague, that struck the community in 1894. About 100 people were dying a day and 2,552 died that year.
The death toll from Sars was 299, with 1,755 people infected. The nightmare is not over for more than 150 patients, who are still being treated for a degenerative bone disease associated with the drugs used to treat Sars.
The emergency did not become as grave as it might have done, however. Speaking more than a year after the nightmare, Sydney Chung Sheung-chee, who rang the alarm bells at the start of the outbreak, says: 'The outbreak could have been more disastrous and killed even more if Hong Kong and the rest of the world had not had responded promptly. It was not the worst scenario we had forecast.'
Professor Chung was then the medical dean of Chinese University, which is associated with the Prince of Wales Hospital, the epicentre of the outbreak.