Posted 2:12 AM

Rest for the Wicked
I'm going on holiday and I won't say where in case the authorities want to quarantine me at the border. So the SARS Tracker will not be updated until May 16 by which time I'm counting on the local authorities to have this epidemic eradicated!

Posted 7:10 PM

The Excel Datasheet has been updated with 6th May WHO figures.

Well the patriarch of the walkabout family died yesterday. He was the 72 year old vegetable seller who is the grandfather of the 4 kids who were diagnosed with SARS after the "hawker center visitation" episode that drew national condemnation. It was the family's second bereavement in a month with their grandmother having died from SARS on the 15th of April. As reported below by a family member, the details of the incident were not fairly represented by the media. Also, given the early death of the grandmother, it is more likely she cought the bug from a 45 year old PPWC worker who went to the same GP clinic as she did rather than from her husband who didn't get ill until a week after her death.

Posted 6:30 PM

The Excel Datasheet has been updated with 5th May WHO figures.

There has been an extraordinary drop off in the number of suspected cases in Singapore yesterday as shown in the graph below:

This has to do with a change in definition of suspect case.

The MOH elaborates in yesterday's report: "The Ministry will from today, adopt the new WHO case definitions for suspect and probable SARS. In patients where the initial clinical presentation and contact history is not sufficient to classify a patient as a suspect or probable case, such cases will be listed under a new category "observation for SARS", until the evolution of the clinical picture and the results of laboratory investigations clarify their status. As these may take several days, contact tracing and the issuance of home quarantine orders, where necessary, will continue to be carried out for such cases."

Note that they did not report the number of cases "under observation for SARS" in their report.

When the WHO revised their case definitions on 1st May, they stated categorically "Clinicians are advised that patients should not have their case definition category downgraded while awaiting results of laboratory testing or on the bases of negative results." This suggests that the WHO does not count on the reliability of such tests at this stage.

On Survival of the Virus
The MOH made a useful clafication about how long the virus can survive exposed. They did not say how long but pointed out that the key method of transmission is through droplets and that viruses lying on exposed surfaces may not present a large enough dose to cause illness.

Posted 2:00 AM

SARS Danger Ratings
The graph below depicts SARS danger ratings. This is my own "lies, damn lies and statistical anlaysis" proprietary formula equal to:

LN (Total Active Cases) + LN (New Cases in last 10 days)

Posted 9:23 PM

Society For The Uniformity of SARS Controls
I have a new pet peeve: SARS controls one-upmanship.

Everyone seems to be doing their own thing. I have one friend who gets her temperature taken at her office once a day, another gets it twice a day, in my office we don't do it at all.

Another friend is not allowed, by company policy, to meet people working on other floors of her firm in order to avoid cross contamination. So now she has to coordinate with colleagues who are at her church in order that they don't attend the same service.

A friend of mine recenlty arrived from Canada. She has a health cert stating she is fine and the authorities did not stop her at the airport so effectively immigration has said she is welcome to roam around Singapore.

But some of my friends won't meet with her or their companies will force them to take 10 days leave.

In one friend's office, they meet every two days in order to discuss new SARS controlling ideas. This is one of those wonderful little forums where people get 60 minutes away from thier regular job and tell others to press lift buttons using their keys and chastise colleagues for threatening national welfare by going over to JB on the weekend.

At one such meeting, the guy serving coffee hadn't checked his temperature that morning even though he felt unwell. As it turned out, later that day he was taken by ambulance to TTSH as a potential suspect.

Penny wise, pound foolish.

People are wasting a lot of time on stupid ideas and unecessary controls while at the same time overlooking basic common sense.

The government should set a national standard and then we should all stick by it: nothing more, nothing less. There is no point me wrapping myself in rubber for the public good if the next person is running around coughing all over the place.

Would somebody on high please detail the bottom line on what they expect from the business community and individuals then let us PLEASE get on with our lives?

Posted 9:01 PM

Patient Database
For compiled details on all cases until 30th April - see here.

Posted 8:54 PM

The Excel Datasheet has been updated with 3rd May WHO figures.

Post-Mortem
The SGP MOH reported that  "Post mortem investigations on the 65 year old male inpatient of the SGH Ward 57/58 cluster who was diagnosed as a probable SARS on 7 April 03 and died on 12 April 03 have shown that he died from a non-SARS cause. The post-mortem showed that he died from multi-organ failure due to an abdominal abscess from an infected gall bladder. Postmortem tissues were tested for coronavirus by 2 different PCR tests, both of which were negative."

This is the same patient who was operated on by the infected doctor raising questions as to whether or not she had infected him. This issue seems to have now been resolved.

The chart above clearly shows the Singapore sees the light at the end of the tunnel.

Before you start opening the champagne
Note that several of the last cases have been infections which occured outside the hospital system - friends of friends so to speak or even more random encounters like the deceased cab driver. There remain some cases, like the woman who showed up at Mount Avernia with SARS, which don't appear to have been traced to a source. So there remains the possibility that SARS is still incubating in the community. Another few weeks of vigilence is necessary for the all clear.

Who is under quarantine?

The MOH site lists the following quarantine numbers:

But there is another group not listed: those held hostage in hospital.

A friend of a friend reports that she went in to SGH for an MRI about 14 days ago and was not allowed to leave. She has been put on a 20 day quarantine at hosptial expense "as a matter of policy." She has not been informed that she was in contact with any SARS patient. Unless the hospital is generally unsafe, this cannot be the case: either this is a specific incident of a SARS encounter or everyone should avoid SGH as a general policy. Are things really that bad there?

Post script: I just learned this person is being discharged today. Apparently, SGH has changed its 20 days ruling. If no fever for 72 hours and stool test is SARS negative, you can be discharged.