Room 911 at Hong Kong's Metropole Hotel was the epicenter of the global SARS outbreak. A year last Saturday, a sick doctor from southern China checked in, bringing with him a terrifying virus that would spread panic and death through Hong Kong and the world.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the day Professor Liu Jianlun was rushed to a nearby hospital after infecting at least 16 guests and visitors.
One year on, every room in the Kowloon hotel was full except for the one he stayed in -- room 911 no longer exists.
The room, which hotel management once considered turning into a museum dedicated to the SARS outbreak, has had the brass plaque bearing the infamous number on its door removed and has replaced it with the number 913.
Every subsequent odd-numbered room on the ninth floor, where Liu infected guests and visitors from Hong Kong, Canada and Singapore who would take the virus around the world, has had its number changed too.
Guests are apparently being told nothing of the hotel's bizarre decision to renumber room 911 out of existence.
A reporter who phoned to ask what had happened to room 911 was told brusquely by a duty manager: "The number of that room has always been 913."
A request to the operator on the in-house phone to put a call through to room 911 was met with the response: "I'm sorry but that line is engaged." A "clean up room" light was on outside room 913, showing it was occupied, though no one answered the door.
The role played by Liu and room 911 in the global SARS outbreak cannot be overstated. It was the subject of an investigation by the WHO, which believes most of the 8,422 cases and 916 deaths in 29 countries can be traced back to the Metropole, excluding those in China.
Liu, a respiratory diseases expert in one of Guangzhou's biggest hospitals, was already infected with SARS when he arrived in Hong Kong on Feb. 21, 2003. The next day he was admitted to the Kwong Wah Hospital hundreds of meters from the hotel, where he died on March 4.
At first it was thought that he spread the virus by coughing and sneezing on fellow guests as they waited for a lift together in the ninth floor corridor. Later, investigations found he may have been sick on the carpet outside room 911, which may have spread the virus.
Overseas guests -- including a 78-year-old woman from Toronto, an American-Chinese businessman bound for Hanoi and three Singaporeans -- carried the virus overseas while a 26-year-old airport technician visiting a friend on the ninth floor was later admitted to the Prince Of Wales Hospital, setting off an outbreak there.
Business continued as usual at the Metropole until its fatal link with the outbreak was discovered on March 19, setting off panic among guests and an exodus from the 487-room hotel.
It seemed in the months afterwards that business would never recover and resident manager Kaivin Ng said on June 22 last year, when occupancy rates recovered to 20 percent: "We might turn the whole floor, or just room 911 where Professor Liu stayed, into a museum."
Soon after, however, the ninth floor was reopened as the spectre of SARS passed and tourists -- particularly the growing number of Chinese tourists allowed in on package tours -- flooded back into Hong Kong with a vengeance.
On Saturday, the hotel's restaurant and lobby was bustling with guests mostly from China who seemed unconcerned about the grim history of the hotel.
Only one man walking into the lobby restaurant was wearing a face mask, the ubiquitous symbol of last year's Hong Kong SARS outbreak.
A receptionist said: "The hotel is fully booked."
A concierge remarked: "We're bursting at the seams. If you want to book a room, you should call at least a week in advance."
One guest, retired Geraldine Pearse from Swansea in Wales, who was staying at the Metropole for four nights as part of a package tour, said: "I thought this was the SARS hotel at the time I booked it but I didn't want to ask when I got here."
"Anyway I'm a great believer that when your time's up, your time's up," Pearse said.
Even if I'd known for sure it wouldn't have stopped me staying here. It must have been very scary here at the time but Hong Kong has been clear of SARS for a long time now," Pearse said.
I'd be more worried about going to Bangkok because of bird flu right now," Pearse said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS