On the second day, an ambulance came to take them back to Shanxi. Shen Zhuang had been trying to work out the matter of the patient's family members for nearly ten hours straight. A rare spring snow was falling on Beijing, as Ms. Yu's relatives who had not developed a fever agreed to return to Shanxi.
That afternoon, an ambulance took Ms. Yu's paternal grandmother, maternal uncle, brother-in-law, and two colleagues from her company back to Taiyuan. They were held in quarantine under observation in Taiyuan. In the end, they were mostly fine: only one colleague was diagnosed with the disease.
Left behind in Beijing, Ms. Yu and the others were miserable. After her father's death on the 7th, her mother died on the 15th, aged 56. One by one, Ms. Yu's husband, younger brother, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and a young man from her company all fell ill and were confined to hospital beds. This plunged the Yu family into an abyss of suffering.[1]
Shen Zhuang felt relieved at the fact that the Yu family's actions saved a number of lives.
"We asked an orderly in the corridor whether she had had any contact with anyone in the Yu family. She said that as soon as they entered, Ms. Yu's uncle told them that they had contracted a contagious disease like hepatitis and that they shouldn't go near them. As a result, that orderly didn't contract SARS."
But there were more troubles ahead. When Shen questioned the Yu clan on their contact with other people, he was told that an uncle was still in Beijing. Furthermore, when Ms. Yu's father had died, they said, he had died in this uncle's embrace.
"This is extremely serious!" Shen Zhuang leapt to his feet. "Why didn't you tell us earlier!?" They were worried that if people found out, the uncle would get in trouble.
"Where is he now?" Shen Zhuang interrogated each of them one by one.
No one answered. Indeed, no one would tell him.
"You… You're all responsible if something happens to him!" Shen Zhuang was enraged. Looking at Ms. Yu and her family, he relented.
"Either way, I need you to relay this to him. One: he must not have any contact with other people. Two: if he feels unwell even in the slightest, he has to telephone us immediately."
There was nothing else he could do. Because SARS had not yet been officially recognized as an infectious disease, he could not force the uncle to be hospitalized in accordance with public health statutes.
That was March 10th. Every hour that followed filled Shen Zhuang with worry. On the 12th, his fears came true—the uncle called, saying he had developed a fever. Shen Zhuang's heart sank.
"Stay where you are and get ready for an ambulance to pick you up."
"We didn't dare have an ambulance pull up at Ms. Yu's uncle's door," says Shen. "We had it stop somewhere unassuming, out of the way. Then a colleague and I came up to the door with gowns and masks. We couldn't put them on before we were inside. We were worried that he wasn't in the right frame of mind, and we were worried that if his neighbors discovered he had contracted SARS, we'd have no choice but to pull off some kind of covert operation."
On his arrival, Shen was anxious but pleased. Anxious, because the uncle's symptoms had progressed: he had unmistakably contracted SARS. Pleased, because after his contact with the rest of the Yu clan, he had isolated himself and not made contact with anyone else, Shen Zhuang escorted Ms. Yu's uncle directly to Beijing's You'an Hospital.
Shen returned to his unit from the You'an hospital, and officially recorded the date in his work diary: March 12, 2003. It was both an ordinary day and an extremely important one. It was an ordinary day, he says, because 99.999% of the population of Beijing was unaware that SARS had lodged itself in the heart of the capital. But March 12, 2003, had particular significance. That day, the World Health Organization had officially christened this hitherto unnamed disease: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS. This was a wake-up call to the entire world.
March 16th, Dongzhimen Hospital
Shen Zhuang received a report from the Dongcheng district CDC at 9 pm on March 16th. He hadn't even had time to write up an outline of Beijing's first case of SARS. The report said that Dongzhimen Hospital had notified the district CDC of its first case of SARS, and it was a particularly severe case. The district CDC couldn't handle it, and asked Shen to help.
SARS had arrived at Dongzhimen Hospital. It was at that point the people of Beijing began to realize that it had come to the capital.
Shen hurried to Dongzhimen Hospital, along with his colleague Dr. Huang from the same office. In the emergency room they saw the patient: Mr. Li, a man in his 70s.
"The patient arrived in our clinic at around 11 am," explained Liu Qingquan, the director of the emergency department. "An X-ray appeared to show pneumonia in the lower right lobe. But at 4 pm, another X-ray showed that the pneumonia had spread to both lungs. By dinnertime, we knew something was wrong. We only just managed to save him. He's still comatose."
