How data stopped SARS
10 years on, SARS survivor Cathy Kong is still haunted by the outbreak.
Outside the Amoy Gardens housing estate, her former home and site of the biggest community outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong, Cathy tells me how she used her willpower to cast the virus away.
“I talked to the virus,” she tells me. “I talked to the disease: ‘go away, go away.”
The SARS outbreak killed 780 people and infected over 8,000 more. It crossed borders and triggered an international health scare.
A decade ago this week, the World Health Organization first named SARS - the deadly virus that would infect 29 countries before it was finally contained four months later.
And, looking back, what was the most indispensable tool that ended the outbreak?
According to Dr. Isabelle Nuttall, WHO Director of Global Capacities Alert and Response, it was data.
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