Hong Kong begins SARS clean-up

Thousands of volunteers in Hong Kong today began a massive cleaning campaign aimed at slowing the spread of SARS.

Officials were monitoring all buildings where Sars cases have been reported to try to avoid further outbreaks, said health director Dr Margaret Chan.

An outbreak at one apartment complex, Amoy Gardens, has infected at least 326 people.

Environment secretary Sarah Liao visited Telford Gardens, another development that has been infected, taking tea in a Chinese restaurant to show it was safe.

At the nearby Kowloon Bay subway train station, people were busily mopping the floors.

Elsewhere, thousands of volunteers, from secretaries and housewives to government officials, fanned out to clean housing developments, restaurants and shopping malls.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome has killed 69 people in Hong Kong and sickened 1,327.

Air travellers leaving the territory spread the disease to three other countries that have now suffered Sars fatalities – Canada, Singapore and Vietnam - and the World Health Organisation has warned people against travelling to Hong Kong.

Home Affairs Secretary Patrick Ho acknowledged yesterday that the clean-up might not necessarily help prevent Sars – which spreads through respiratory droplets and in the Amoy Gardens outbreak here through infected sewage – but said “an environment that isn’t clean won’t help”.

Ho also said the cleansing would benefit Hong Kong psychologically and should help restore its image as a good place to live, visit and do business.

“We need to rebuild our own confidence before we can restore the international community’s faith in Hong Kong,” he said.

Critics have accused the government of responding too slowly to the crisis and Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa acknowledged yesterday that officials could have acted more swiftly.

Tung said authorities were initially a bit passive in tracking down people who came in contact with Sars patients, but have since become “very proactive”.

Officials monitoring buildings which have suffered Sars outbreaks are hoping to avoid a repeat of the situation in Amoy Gardens, the site of Hong Kong’s biggest outbreak.

A government report released on Thursday cited several reasons for the spread - including droplets from infected sewage that entered people’s homes through drains, and a possible “chimney effect” where wind carried leaking droplets to the top of the 33-storey complex.

“It’s a plausible hypothesis,” said David Heymann, executive director of communicable diseases at the Geneva-based WHO.

Airborne transmission, which presumably would have infected many thousands of people, has been ruled out.