It's getting closer and closer to home

Corbett | May 12, 2003 11:32 PM

I just found out today that all the employees on the 7th floor of a company my friend B is VP for have been told to stay at home for 10 days because one of the staff got infected. I immediately called to check in and tell him we were all worried about him, and offered our prayers.

Turns out that the infected person is his secretary, and her entire family was infected when they were in the hospital visiting their terminally ill grandmother. Apparently the hospital had a SARS patient either in the same room, or an adjoining room, and never told them, or even scarier, didn't know. Either way, the mother, uncle, aunt, and daughter were all infected, and probably all the staff and visitors on the floor.

This was 4/26, and there was no mention from the hospital until just a few days ago that it even happened. This was Chang Gung Hospital in Kaohsiung. Two weeks of media cover up and negligence, and even the newspapers don't know. What is more appauling is that the mother felt feverish and ill after returning to Taipei (BTW: they all took the flight from Kaohsiung to Taipei unaware), so she immediately visited one of the best hospitals in town, Cathay, for an exam, where two doctors both said she was fine, nothing to worry about. Being rightfully paranoid, she went to Tai Da, where she was immediately diagnosed and quarantined, and sent to another hospital in Lin-ko.

Now my friend B is trying to remain focused, keep his staff calm, and not let the word reach the press so that the entire company has to close down, creating panic among their hundreds of thousands of customers and ruining their hard earned corporate image.

They are seriously thinking of bringing negligence charges against the hospital, but this creates an awkward legal issue because they are both owned by the same conglomerate mother company.

And to think we've been dealing with everyone on that floor actively for the past four months...not to mention dinners, movies, get togethers, etc. Sigh...

The sad moral to this story? Don't visit anyone in the hospital, even if it's your own dying grandmother.

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Category: Mr. Asia

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