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Hong Kong healthcare and hospitals
Hong KongHealth & Environment

Before Covid-19, there was Sars: 20 years later, Hong Kong survivors recall days of fear and lingering smell of death

  • Over three months, Sars epidemic infected 1,755 people in Hong Kong and left 299 dead
  • Two fathers describe their days of terror in ICU, fearing worst for themselves and their families

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Montage: Henry Wong
Emily HungandSammy Heung
On March 12, 2003, the World Health Organization issued a global alert against a nameless “severe form of unknown pneumonia” sweeping several parts of Asia and elsewhere. Hong Kong was among the places hit hard by Sars – severe acute respiratory syndrome – which was deadly and spread swiftly. In the first of a two-part series, two Sars survivors recall their ordeal 20 years ago and how it helped them cope when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

So Chi-keung will never forget the month he spent with other Sars patients in the isolation ward of Hong Kong’s Princess Margaret Hospital 20 years ago.

“It felt like we were waiting for our turn to die,” recalled the former owner of a metalware factory. “Every day we saw someone die in the isolation ward, and we were told there was no cure.”

Twenty years after Sars hit the city, So Chi-keung still has fresh memories of the health crisis. Photo: K. Y. Cheng
Twenty years after Sars hit the city, So Chi-keung still has fresh memories of the health crisis. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Known as Ah So to those who knew him in Sham Shui Po, he was 52 at the time with a wife and four teenage children. He worried about them all the time as he lay in his hospital bed. Fortunately, none of them contracted Sars.

His infection started with a high fever and coughing. Within a week, he was in hospital and struggling to breathe.

“I was exhausted just talking on the phone, like a dying old man,” recalled So, now 72. “The trauma, panic and anxiety still knock on my door from time to time, even after 20 years. I cannot control it, nor can I stop myself from falling into those traps again and again.”

Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung, the city’s only infectious diseases hospital at the time, was the designated hospital to receive all new Sars patients from March 29 that year.

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