Man Diagnosed With SARS Took 7 International Flights

April 11, 2003
Keith Bradsher/NYT NYT

HONG KONG In a striking example of how far and fast a virus can be carried in an era of international jet travel, health officials announced Thursday that a man infected with a deadly respiratory disease had flown from Hong Kong to Munich, Barcelona, Frankfurt, London, Munich again, Frankfurt again and then back to Hong Kong before entering a hospital.

The Hong Kong Health Department appealed Thursday for passengers and air crews from all seven flights to contact medical professionals.

A Health Department spokeswoman said it was not yet known whether the man, 48, had infected anyone else on the flights with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

All of the flights were on the German carrier Lufthansa. The airline said in a statement Thursday that it had disinfected all of the airplanes and was contacting the air crews and passengers. It contended that the likelihood of anyone becoming infected during the flights was "very remote."

Airlines have been saying that the filters aboard modern planes do a good job of removing viruses from the air. But according to the Health Department here, at least 13 people have fallen sick with SARS so far after they shared a flight last month from Hong Kong to Beijing with an elderly man who had become infected with the disease while visiting his brother in a hospital here.

The appeal for the Lufthansa air crews and passengers to come forward follows nearly a dozen such appeals by health officials and airlines operating flights in and out of Hong Kong.

Travelers have continued to board planes while feeling unwell despite strenuous warnings from the World Health Organization and national health agencies.

In the case announced Thursday, the man flew on Lufthansa Flight 731 on March 30 from Hong Kong to Munich, and traveled on the following day on Flight 4316 to Barcelona, according to an itinerary released here by the Health Department. The man then developed symptoms while in Barcelona.

He then traveled on Flight 4303 to Frankfurt on April 2 and on to London the same day on Flight 4520. He went to Munich the next day on Flight 4671, then headed for Frankfurt on April 4 on Flight 265. The man connected with Flight 738 the same day back to Hong Kong, arriving on April 5.

The man checked into a hospital here on Tuesday and was confirmed to have SARS on Thursday.

Doctors do not yet know how infectious, if at all, people are in the early stages of SARS. But Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's secretary for health, welfare and food, warned Thursday that doctors here had been become infected from people who had not yet shown the full symptoms identified by the World Health Organization.

Yeoh suggested that even someone with diarrhea alone could be infectious.

The man's nationality remained unclear Thursday. While the Health Department statement did not identify the nationality at all, the airline's statement described the man as Chinese.

A Lufthansa official said the airline had only been told by the Health Department here that the man was Chinese. The Health Department spokeswoman said that the man seemed to be of Chinese descent, but that the department could not confirm that.

"He travels a lot," the spokeswoman said. "We don't know his passport."

Hong Kong still issues separate passports from mainland China, a legacy of its days as a former British colony. Officials here sometimes refer to people as Chinese if they are from Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, or if they are of Chinese descent.

The infected man's odyssey could not come at a worse time for Hong Kong, as countries have begun limiting the entry of people traveling from here or imposing quarantines on them.

Malaysia on Thursday stopped issuing visas to practically all holders of Hong Kong and mainland China passports. Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong's main airline, announced Thursday that it had suspended all flights to Kuala Lumpur because of such few passengers.

Regina Ip, Hong Kong's secretary of security, met Thursday with Malaysia's consul general here to protest the decision. "There is no reason why the mobility of Hong Kong residents who do not have any close contact with infected persons should be restricted," she said.

Singapore also imposed a 10-day quarantine Thursday on all foreign workers earning less than $24,000 a year who have recently been in a SARS-affected country or territory. Employers must pay all costs of the quarantine.

Singapore has been trying for years to lure high-income expatriates in financial services and other lucrative industries, while making it harder for lower-income workers to immigrate.

Hong Kong's economy depends heavily on its role as Asia's transportation hub. Hong Kong has the world's busiest container port for sea freight, the world's busiest airport for international air cargo shipments and what was, until recently, Asia's busiest airport in terms of international air passenger departures.

But the availability of flights here is withering as many governments have warned their citizens not to visit and many businesses have ordered their employees not to travel to Hong Kong.

Cathay Pacific has canceled one-quarter of its daily flights here. Dragonair, an affiliated carrier that dominates the route from Hong Kong to cities in mainland China, has stopped operating almost half its flights. Continental Airlines canceled its daily nonstop flight from Hong Kong to New York earlier this week over lack of passengers.

The Hong Kong Airport Authority said that one-third of all flights originally scheduled to operate Thursday had been canceled for various reasons.

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