The SARS Outbreak in Hong Kong: Use of the Internet in Times of Crisis

INFORMATION DISSEMINATION

In the early days of the outbreak, mistrust and uncertainty swept the community and rumours abounded about the origins, causes, transmission and treatment of the disease, as well as speculation about possible cover-ups and other SARS-related developments. Among the more outlandish rumours in circulation:

• SARS was the result of a biological warfare trial gone awry
• SARS infected individuals could be cured by drinking Yakult, boiling white vinegar and other unproven actions.
• Westerners were immune to SARS.
• Designer face masks were already available for purchase from Gucci and Louis Vitton boutiques.

On April 1, a 14 year old schoolboy set off panic when he uploaded a fake web page in the format of the Ming Pao daily newspaper, announcing that Hong Kong had been declared an infected port, the Hang Seng Index had collapsed and that Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa had resigned. Word of the fake bulletin spread rapidly on the Internet and by word of mouth; there were reports of panic buying in supermarkets until the government rushed to issue an official denial. Within hours, the boy was promptly arrested and charged with an obscure ordinance decreeing that a person may not "knowingly furnish any information which is false concerning any disease or death." Another sham involved a hoaxer who sent out false email reporting that the SARS virus had been discovered in air filters in the MTR system. Police computer experts were immediately on the trail of the trickster and the MTRC issued a prompt denial.

The incidents above highlighted the level of public anxiety in the wake of what many felt was a slow government response at the onset of the outbreak. As it became clear that SARS was spreading in the community, online speculation grew about which buildings and areas had been affected. The government had initially resisted public pressure to release details of where SARS cases had been recorded, but believing that the public had a right to such information, four IT engineers began compiling a list of infected buildings on their website, www.sosick.org. The site became immensely popular and users began contributing substantiated information to its growing directory. At its peak, sosick.org recorded over 200,000 hits a day. ⁴

On April 9, in what many believed was a decision directly influenced by the popularity of sites like sosick.org, the government announced that it would release the names of infected buildings on its official site. Not much later, the broadcasting of SARS information was taken to new dimensions when local mobile phone operator Sunday Communications launched a location-based SMS service that would inform users which buildings within one kilometre had been affected by SARS. The innovative operator later followed up by launching a "Family Watch" service allowing users to track the whereabouts of family members at the street and district level and also identify any SARS infected buildings in the vicinity.

Among the medical establishment, the use of Internet-based communications was vital for rapid dissemination of information as researchers around the world contended with a rapidly spreading virus. 13 labs around the world worked in close collaboration to decode the genetic makeup of the SARS virus in mere weeks - an undertaking that commonly took years with previous infectious diseases. Meanwhile, a Hong Kong-based company launched a distributed computing platform to tackle complex statistical problems related to the spread of SARS. Computer users around the world were asked to volunteer their PC's idle time, thereby pooling resources to create the enormous processing power necessary to analyse the disease's spreading patterns.

4. Chloe Lai, "Lifting the Lid on the spread of Sars," South China Morning Post, April 23, 2003.