My Business Trip to China in the Last Days of SARS-CoV (COVID-19’s predecessor)

COVID-19. We hear about it all the time. It’s part of our everyday lives. A lived experience. You would be hard pressed to find anyone on this planet who hasn’t heard of COVID-19. And yet the opposite is true of its predecessor Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

According to the World Health Organisation SARS Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is a ‘virus identified in 2003. SARS-CoV is thought to be an animal virus from an as-yet-uncertain animal reservoir, perhaps bats, that spread to other animals (civet cats) and first infected humans in the Guangdong province of southern China in 2002.’¹ Sound familiar?

Although the first cases of SARS-CoV occurred in November 2002 it was only officially recognised at the end of February 2003. ‘At the time, the Chinese government was criticized for responding slowly to the outbreak and concealing the seriousness of the illness.’² It took several months before they ‘started sharing information with the World Health Organization (WHO).’³ The Guardian Newspaper even reported on a possible cover-up.⁴ It has been suggested that SARS-CoV originated in a Chinese ‘wet market’.⁵ The spread was initially limited to mainland China and Hong Kong but ‘there were also a small number of cases in several other countries, including 4 in the UK, plus a significant outbreak in Toronto, Canada.’⁶

While all this was going on I was working for Alcatel’s Fraud Management Group in the UK. We produced software that enabled Telecommunications Providers to analyse Call Detail Records (CDRs) for potential fraudulent activity. The group was looking to expand our footprint in Asia and an opportunity came up in 2002 with a large Telco in the city of Tianjin, northern China. By early 2003 our in-region partner Shanghai Bell were pushing for us to send an engineer and trainer over to China to spend some time with the customer. These days much of that work could have been done remotely. However, it’s hard to believe that in 2003 we didn’t have video conferencing facilities and if a voice conference call wouldn’t suffice the only alternative was to fly out and see the customer in person. As such we flew quite a bit back then.

Now you would think, given the stringent measures we have all become accustomed to, that business travel would have been delayed or postponed during a virus outbreak. But other than the Chinese, whose own response was painstakingly slow, no one seemed particularly concerned about the newly reported virus. In mid-March 2003 I had my visa and was ready to travel. But as news of cases outside of China started to surface the UK Foreign Office advised travellers not to travel to affected countries especially China. They cautiously relaxed their stance in June and I boarded a flight bound for Hong Kong on 5 July, the day the World Health Organisation declared SARS-CoV “contained”. ‘The SARS pandemic was eventually brought under control in July 2003, following a policy of isolating people suspected of having the condition and screening all passengers travelling by air from affected countries for signs of the infection.’⁷ In spite of this several cases were still reported until May 2004.

My flight from London to Hong Kong was long and uneventful. After the dot com crash all business class privileges were taken away and we were forced to travel economy. Not helpful for long haul flights such as that one! I had a 5 hour wait in Hong Kong for my connecting flight to Beijing. It was there that I had my first exposure to traveller screening. As we boarded the Beijing flight our temperatures were taken by men in white lab coats with masks. There was no hand sanitising or compulsory wearing of masks for the passengers.

Above: I arrived in China two days after the WHO proclaimed SARS-CoV contained

At Beijing Airport very few checks were done on arriving passengers. I was met by my colleagues from Shanghai Bell. As we exited the airport two things immediately caught my attention – the modern infrastructure and the visibly poor air quality. The day was warm and humid but any blue skies one would normally associate with summer were banished behind a thick and permanent haze. Blue skies, it seemed, were a casualty of China’s massive increase in manufacturing during the preceding years.

The one and a half hour drive to Tianjin was momentarily interrupted by a road block and the familiar sign of men in white lab coats taking temperatures. That was the last time I would be exposed to any testing or precautionary measures until my departure a week later.

Upon arrival at the hotel I met Giles (pronounced Jeel in au Francais) my partner in this epic adventure, just in from Paris. The Shanghai Bell chaps had booked us into the Holiday Inn which on first impression seemed pleasant enough for this little undertaking. Showing concern for our wellbeing they were insistent that the hotel manager accompany the entire entourage up to our rooms to make sure that everything was up to standard. It was. Perhaps one of the reasons we were receiving seemingly preferential treatment had something to do with the fact that no other Westerners were staying in the hotel at that time following a few months of SARS-CoV international travel bans. Now I use the term Westerners rather loosely. For, although I was living in England, working for a French company and travelling on an Irish passport I am in fact African, or more specifically South African. Be that as it may, the service and assistance we received from the Tianjin Holiday Inn for the entire duration of our stay was world class.  

My week in China was a fascinating and unique experience. On the first morning we went for breakfast and the hotel’s dining room was full of Chinese businessmen. The hotel provided both traditional and Western style buffer breakfasts. Our foolish attempt to eat breakfast with chopsticks was quickly abandoned when we noticed that all the Chinese businessmen were using knives, forks and spoons! During the week our Shanghai Bell colleagues took us to an upmarket restaurant in the city. The décor was traditional with ornately carved wooden roof beams. Needless to say my 6’3” frame was a little bit taller than the regular patrons of this fine establishment and my head quickly made acquaintance with one of the aforementioned beams. With nothing damaged but my pride I quickly took my seat and the evening’s festivities continued. There were several courses of exquisitely presented food. Unfortunately my palate was not accustomed or prepared for the likes of jellied, boiled crab. That said it was a marvellous evening. Tianjin was an impressive city with modern steel and glass office blocks. But if you looked closely down some of the alleys you caught just a glimpse of “old China”, from before the buildings, before the boom. And just around the corner from our modern hotel there were people on the pavement barbequing an assortment of animals, such was the contrast.

I checked out of the hotel in the early hours of 11 July. My flight was only leaving in the early evening but our Shanghai Bell colleagues had arranged a bus to take us for some sightseeing in Beijing. We visited the millennium monument, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. There were a reasonable amount of tourists at these sites, all Chinese of course. Foreign tourists had yet to return to the country. No doubt my height and the novelty factor of being one of only two non-Chinese people on Tiananmen Square was the reason behind the numerous requests I received to be photographed with some of the locals. We went off to lunch at a little restaurant just off the square. The food was basic, but just like the Chinese food I was used to eating back in England. Although I ate well my colleagues were less than impressed and were at pains to apologise to Giles and I for taking us to such a place.

Above: Standing on Tiananmen Square (11 July 2003)

Below: In front of the Forbidden City with the tallest member of the Shanghai Bell team (11 July 2003)

Leaving Beijing my overall impression of the country was a positive one. The people in particular were excellent hosts to these two foreigners. A big effort was made to make our stay a pleasant one and I will never forget that. But I can’t help thinking, with experience of the current pandemic, that lessons weren’t learnt from the SARS-CoV breakout. It seemed odd too that no one was expected to wear masks or use hand sanitisers just days after the WHO declared SARS-CoV contained. The impact caused by SARS-CoV pales into insignificance when compared to the newest strain. However, SARS-CoV was still serious. ‘During the period of infection, there were 8,098 reported cases of SARS and 774 deaths.’⁸ The eventual mortality rate was about 1 in 10. This being the case one has to wonder whether more couldn’t have been done by authorities including the WHO to identify the root cause of SARS-CoV and put greater measures in place to prevent it and related outbreaks from occurring in the future.

References

1.  Anon. ND. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) , World Health Organisation, accessed 4 June 2020, https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/sars/en

2.  Radcliffe, S. 2020. Can We Learn Anything from the SARS Outbreak to Fight COVID-19?, accessed 4 June 2020, https://www.healthline.com/health-news/has-anything-changed-since-the-2003-sars-outbreak

3.   Ibid.

4. Staff and agencies. 2003. China accused of SARS cover-up, The Guardian, accessed 5 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/09/sars.china

5.   Woodley, M. 2020. How does coronavirus compare with previous global outbreaks? , NewsGP, accessed 5 June 2020, https://www.racp.org.au/newsgp/ clinical/how-does-coronavirus-compare-with-previous-global

6. Anon. ND. SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) - NHS , NHS, accessed 3 June 2020, https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sars

7.   Ibid.

8.   Ibid.