Abstract
An unprecedented community outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred in the Amoy Gardens, a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong. Droplet, air, contaminated fomites, and rodent pests have been proposed to be mechanisms for transmitting SARS in a short period. We studied nasopharyngeal viral load of SARS patients on admission and their geographic distribution. Higher nasopharyngeal viral load was found in patients living in adjacent units of the same block inhabited by the index patient, while a lower but detectable nasopharyngeal viral load was found in patients living further away from the index patient. This pattern of nasopharyngeal viral load suggested that airborne transmission played an important part in this outbreak in Hong Kong. Contaminated fomites and rodent pests may have also played a role.
Highlights
An unprecedented community outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred in the Amoy Gardens, a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong
We analyzed the distribution of the initial SARS-CoV viral load by quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of nasopharyngeal aspirates of the first 79 SARS patients from Amoy Gardens admitted to our hospital
The demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of patients residing in E block and those residing in non-E blocks were compared (Table)
Summary
An unprecedented community outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred in the Amoy Gardens, a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong. We studied nasopharyngeal viral load of SARS patients on admission and their geographic distribution. Higher nasopharyngeal viral load was found in patients living in adjacent units of the same block inhabited by the index patient, while a lower but detectable nasopharyngeal viral load was found in patients living further away from the index patient This pattern of nasopharyngeal viral load suggested that airborne transmission played an important part in this outbreak in Hong Kong. A community outbreak affected 321 residents of a densely populated housing estate, the Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong, from March 20 to April 15, 2003 (2) This housing estate consists of 19 high-rise apartment blocks (A–S). We correlated the pattern of viral load with the geographic distribution of these patients from Amoy Gardens, which may indicate the mode of transmission in this point-source outbreak
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