SARS Outbreak Study 1

Data
Collection

Step 4: Data Collection

Infectious Ward of the Epiville General Hospital

Your next step is to do some investigative work at the Epiville General Hospital. You begin your detective work at the infectious ward of the Epiville General Hospital, the hospital you are investigating at this point, from which the cases were reported to the DOH. You need to review the charts of patients who died from the mysterious disease. The administrator at the Admissions Office tells you that they suspect that this is severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), but the hospital has not yet received the materials to conduct diagnostic tests that could confirm these suspicions.

You decide to create a list with the names of the patients, their symptoms upon admission to the hospital, their duration, and if any of their family memebers got sick as well. You end up reviewing 12 charts of the patients who seem to have died from the same disease. Six persons were 60 and older, 4 persons were in the age range of 25 to 50, and 2 were children, one 3 year old and one 11 year old.

As you leave the hospital, you are suddenly approached by the WEPI news crew, which has camped outside the hospital for the last two days since the rumors about mysterious deaths got out to the community. You decline to comment, insisting that you need time to review the available data before making any statements, but this encounter does make you feel important...

Signs and Symptoms Chart
Signs/Symptoms	N	Percent (%)
Fever of 100.4° or More	12	100
Chills	2	17
Headache	3	25
Muscle Aches	5	42
Dry Cough	9	75
Shortness of Breath	6	50
Required a Ventilator	4	33
Severe Diarrhea	3	25

As you review the charts, you suddenly realize that many of the patients who died from the disease also happened to live on the same street in the Amoy Apartment Complex. You decide to proceed by going over to their place of residence.

Amoy Apartment Complex

You enter the apartment complex where the twelve fatalities occurred. You arrive at what seems to be the common street address for the 12 fatalities and find yourself in the midst of the apartment complex. Surprisingly, you notice that the large playground and a pretty garden with benches, which surrounds the apartment complex, are completely deserted on this beautiful sunny afternoon. When you find the management office, you realize that the door is locked but the time is only 3:05 in the afternoon. You keep ringing the bell but no one answers.

You finally give up and decide to leave a note where you write the reason of your visit: "Dear Sir or Madam, my name is Jane Woods and I work at the Department of Health. I would like to ask you several questions about some tenants from your apartment complex who became ill over the last 3 weeks and were hospitalized at the Epiville General Hospital. Please let me know what the best time to come by would be." Just as you slip the note under the door and head down to the hall, the door opens and a man's voice with a worried face calls to you. He is apologetic for not having opened the door earlier but pleads that you try to understand why he is behaving like this.

The man is Mr. Jones, one of the managers of the apartment complex. He tells you that one tragedy after another has struck this set of buildings and people of all ages, young and old are coming down with a severe flu and are dying. People are panicking and hardly anybody has left the building over the last three days. He has received 100 phone calls from tenants about breaking rent contracts.

You learn that aside from those persons who already passed away there are 70 other people who came down with similar respiratory flu like symptoms. Most of these individuals were hospitalized at the nearby Epiville General Hospital. Nobody knows what has caused this deadly disease. You find out hat there are 200 resident apartments with a total number of 600 residents. You take down the names of these people who reported being affected with similar symptoms.

This is a far cry from the happy days of not so long ago. Just a few weeks ago, on August 1st, the management organized a luau party for residents of the complex. Approximately 300 tenants attended. It was an incredibly successful party and everyone enjoyed the food and drinks provided by the management. One of the families residing in the Amoy Apartment complex even brought a family member, visiting from Taiwan who was in town, to the luau party. Now the whole family is down with the disease at the Epiville General Hospital fighting for their lives.

Before going back to the neighborhood hospital to review the charts of the names you just obtained, you decide to get some caffeine flowing through your system but the deli in the Amoy Apartment Complex is closed.

Learning
Objectives

Introduction
to Study

Data
Collection