91 cases traced to one woman

JUST one person, former air-stewardess Esther Mok, started the chain transmission of the SARS bug here, infecting 91 people. 

Although there were three women who stayed at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong and brought the pneumonia-like bug home, the other two did not infect anyone. They have since been discharged. 

Mok, in her early 20s, infected 20 people in five days. They, in turn, transmitted the virus to 71 people. 

The breakdown: 45 family members, friends or close contacts, and 46 hospital workers who were infected can be traced back to Mok, who is still in hospital. Four people, including Mok's 50-year-old father and the family's pastor, Simon Loh, 39, have since died. 

On Wednesday, the 42-year-old mother of a 17-year-old who has SARS was diagnosed with the illness too. The family had travelled to Hong Kong and Guangdong last month. 

Another two who had brought the virus are Chong Pei Ling, 29, a designer who returned from Hong Kong and Beijing and a 56-year-old Chinese national here to visit her daughter. 

None of them have infected anyone else as yet, but officials are keeping watch over 47 people, including two children and a student whose mother died of SARS. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network  

Another perspective from The Straits Times, a partner of Asia News Network.