Deadly disease

The atypical pneumonia spreading around the world is leaving a trail of devastation as health workers, hospitals, hotels, airlines and even nations’ economies struggle to cope, reports DENISE GRADY 

LAST November in Foshan, a small industrial city in Guangdong Province in southern China, a businessman became desperately ill with an unusual type of pneumonia. Doctors could not identify the germ that was making him sick. Ominously, although pneumonia is not usually very contagious, the four health workers who treated him also fell gravely ill with the same disease.