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Posted on 03/19/2003 11:07:19 AM PST by Mother Abigail

Seven victims of mystery pneumonia stayed on same floor of Hong Kong hotel

01:47 PM EST Mar 19

MARGARET WONG

HONG KONG (AP) - Seven people who came down with a mysterious form of pneumonia, including two who have died, spent time on the same floor of a Hong Kong hotel before the outbreak prompted a global alert, officials said Wednesday.

One was a 64-year-old medical professor from Guangzhou, China, who died in Hong Kong on March 4, and one was a 78-year-old woman from Toronto, who died after returning to Canada, according to a Hong Kong government spokeswoman.

The other visitors of the Metropole Hotel who became sick were three Singaporean women, two of them age 23 and one 33; a 72-year-old Canadian man; and a 26-year-old Hong Kong man who had gone to the hotel to see a friend, said Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the Hong Kong Health Department.

The people had no known connection with each other and had apparently visited the Metropole, on Hong Kong's Kowloon peninsula, in separate groups or alone, said the government spokeswoman, who agreed to be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity. They had all been on the hotel's ninth floor between Feb. 12 and March 2, Chan told a news conference.

As many as 11 people are believed to have died worldwide from severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, but the World Health Organization has not yet decided whether to include the Chinese professor and another victim on its official list.

Two people who died in Canada are on the WHO list but it was not immediately clear if the Toronto woman who visited the Metropole was one of them. None of the 200 to 300 workers at the hotel has become ill and although conditions seem safe there now, the ninth floor has been closed until it is sterilized, Chan said.

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