Hanoi alerts the world to the SARS outbreak
13Johnny Chen, an American Businessman, who had traveled to Hanoi via Hong Kong was hospitalized with a mysterious viral infection that quickly spread through the facility infecting 38 members of staff.
Alarmed and not knowing what they were dealing with, the Vietnamese called in the World Health Organization and Dr Carlo Urbani confirmed the virus was something completely new.
By the end of March both Chen and Dr Urbani would be dead and the virus had spread across the world.
Fortunately the epidemic had largely burned out by June 2003 with fewer than 9000 cases reported throughout its course
In total around 770 people would die
The source of the disease was a mystery but it would later turn out that it came from China and the Chinese government had been aware of some kind of outbreak since at least December 2002 but didn’t tell anyone…