Lessons learned from Katrina, 9/11, SARS, and other disasters
So I think those are the challenges for us going forward.
SHUTE: Thank you.
Dr. Low, would you like to talk to us a little bit about when you first heard about SARS, you thought maybe you had avian influenza on your hand, I think.
LOW: Well, it was the week of – it would have been March 11th when we had a patient in hospital with an unusual disease that we couldn't diagnosed, and concerned that this might be influenza and possibly even avian influenza, and March 13 the WHO released their first announcement of the threat of a possible new cause of pneumonia, and we realized then that in fact that's what we had on our hands. This was the son of a woman who came back from Hong Kong, developed a respiratory illness and died, and her son shortly thereafter became ill and was admitted to a local hospital, to the emergency room where he was held for 12 hours and then admitted.
So by March 14th, we had called in all of the family members and realized they were all sick; they all had pneumonia. And initially this was really interesting. We had a new disease, we were one of the few places in the world that were experiencing it. We didn't realize the actual implication. And it wasn't until about a week later that we started to see healthcare workers come back to that same emergency room sick, and family members sick, and visitors sick, and physicians that had cared for these family members being sick. And it soon became evident that we not only had a new disease, but we were seeing transmission. And I think that it wasn't so much that it was a new disease that was important or being able to identify it, it was knowing how was this thing being transmitted because we didn't know if it was being transmitted by the air or was it person-to-person contact, but it clearly became evident that we were seeing transmission.
And do during those early days, we were watching what was unfolding in Hong Kong, which was essentially about two weeks ahead of us in the number of cases that they were reporting, hearing what was happening in Vietnam, and trying to really get your head around how to deal with this problem. And when we saw our colleagues and healthcare workers becoming sick, that was when we realized that we were really dealing with something new and something potentially very dangerous.
I remember – it was on March 23rd – we opened a hospital – an old hospital, a TB hospital that had been closed, and that Sunday night I admitted - with colleagues admitted 14 healthcare workers who came into that ward, all healthcare workers from Scarborough Grace Hospital. And the people that were caring for them were volunteers. These were people that agreed to come forward and to look after them.
And I'll always remember one of the nurses saying that, you know, I'm not so much concerned about myself, but I'm afraid if I'll take this home. She not only came down with the disease and died, but her husband, who was admitted to hospital the same day she was, and he also died, and that – those were the days when we just didn't understand just how infectious this was. Were we dealing with the next pandemic?
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