I've heard rumors from some friends that a guy that works, I mean worked, at Hong Kong Food Market on Westpark and Gessner recently (yesterday?) died from SARS, and that the store was shut down for a couple of hours because of it. I go to that store only once in a while, but I do go to the Hong Kong City Mall on Bellaire almost weekly to eat, grocery shop, etc. Now, after hearing these rumors, most every Asian I know is scared out of their mind of going even to the one on Bellaire, since there's a good chance that people that frequent one Hong Kong location also frequent the other. It's gotten to the point that people are suspicious of even being in the same place as people that even might have recently been in that general area. I tried searching on Yahoo! news, google news, the CDC website, chron.com, but found nothing to back up the rumor that someone died of SARS in SW Houston's Chinese/Vietnamese area. If anyone can provide any information (link) it would be much appreciated.
Just rumors. My wife's doctor told her today that there are two cases here...not sure to what degree though.
I don’t hear much about it on American media, but SARS is a real issue in Canada, particularly in Ontario. There have been 8 deaths in Toronto and about 200 people are confirmed to have it. They’ve closed a hospital and voluntarily quarantined hundreds of people, and even non-voluntarily quarantined 2 people. In Alberta there are suspected cases, but none confirmed yet. With all the traffic between Calgary and Toronto, though, I don’t think it will be long before it's here. It seems that only certain people become very sick and only about 3% die, but it’s still pretty scary stuff.
