About 20 friends gathered around the bed of 29-year-old British teacher Clare Lennon for a farewell party at her private room in St Paul's Hospital in Causeway Bay on April 16. The room was small. Everyone was optimistic Lennon's health would improve soon, even though doctors said she was seriously ill.
The next day, Lennon was driven by ambulance to the airport and, with her parents beside her, took a Cathay Pacific flight back to Britain. A week later, on April 24, the woman was dead.
Added to their shock at the death of their friend was news that Lennon had tested positive for the tuberculosis bacteria in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test conducted by Queen Mary Hospital laboratory on her sputum. The results of the sputum test, ordered on April 11, came through on April 18 - the day after she left for her native England.
None of the people, including close friends, who visited her in the hospital was told to wear a mask. One friend, who had seen her over a three-day period, was asked by Lennon to pat her back while coughing so she could breathe more easily. Lennon had been having breathing difficulties for at least a month before she was admitted to St Paul's.
The hospital also delayed reporting the test results to the Department of Health (DOH). Once informed, the department traced and tried to contact 328 people, 80 per cent of them schoolchildren but also including 14 on the Cathay Pacific flight Lennon took.
So far two have been found with TB - one with active TB and the other with latent TB. Health authorities said the two cases could not be definitively linked to Lennon.
Health authorities have in place preparedness pandemic plans and have been holding drills and exercises to test their system. The plan covers all notifiable diseases, and what the World Health Organisation has defined as 'public health emergencies of international concern'.
