SARS’ categorization as a coronavirus conveniently aligned with COVID-19, which is caused by SARS-CoV2. The similarity between the two coronaviruses and diseases meant that at least some of the information I was reading about in my research project, I had learned over the course of the pandemic. One really interesting thing I learned, however, was how SARS entered Hong Kong in the first place, and its distant but existing parallel to COVID-19.

In late February of 2003, a medical professor from Guangzhou visited Hong Kong, staying in room 911 (now removed due to the stigma) of the Metropark Hotel Kowloon, then known as the Metropole Hotel. Unbeknownst to him, he had been afflicted with SARS, likely from the outbreak sparked in a major teaching hospital in Guangzhou, the city where the professor was from. The Metropole hotel outbreak infected 12 people, some of whom ended up travelling around the world and carrying the disease outside of China and throughout Asia. Other infected visitors of the hotel included a young Hong Kong resident who was visiting a friend. He fell ill, and after his admittance to the Prince of Wales Hospital (PWH) in Hong Kong, another SARS outbreak sparked, yet it was not the largest of them all. The largest spreading event in Hong Kong occurred in Amoy Gardens, where a patient from PWH brought the disease to a private housing estate. Approximately 300 residents were subsequently infected. In general, residential compounds and hospital situations were the most risky in terms of infection. Notably, 22% of all probable SARS cases occurred in hospital and health-care workers.

The theory is that SARS-CoV mutated from a strain of coronavirus normally infecting only animals into a strain that afflicted humans, and from its initial mutation, SARS has continued to evolve and change. Unlike the coronavirus, however, SARS’ mutations did not prove beneficial to its survival. Because there was no vaccine or known cure and humans did not have much ability to fight the virus, the SARS virus had little selective pressure to evolve to become stronger. Following Hong Kong’s restrictive quarantine and preventative measures, the city entered the year of 2004 free of the epidemic, though the ghost of the SARS epidemic continues to haunt the city to this day.