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The present Swine Flu strain is H1N1, similar to the 1918 Spanish Flu. The mortality rate, at about 2.5%, isn't exceptionally high, but tens of millions died because it was easily passed among humans, and spread quickly.

Hong Kong has had recent experience with with two much more lethal virus strains:

1. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Very contagious and a mortality rate of 17%. In a 2003 outbreak in Hong Kong, 299 of 1755 that were infected died. Thanks to an exceptional response by health organizations, the virus was contained, and a worldwide epidemic avoided.

2. Avian Flu (H5N1). Only 421 people contracted it, but 257 died (61% mortality rate). Fortunately so far, it hasn't mutated into a more contagious form.


As a result, Hong Hong is one of the best prepared cities to handle a flu epidemic.

From NYTimes The lessons learned from SARS did not go to waste in Hong Kong. While Mexico struggles to confirm cases of swine flu and sends samples to the United States, Hong Kong is already performing swift genetic tests on patient samples and will have laboratories doing so at six local hospitals by Thursday. Tens of thousands of doctors and nurses, including retirees and those with medical training who have moved to other occupations, are tracked on databases and ready to be mobilized.

Contingency plans are ready to keep public transport, electricity, food supplies, telecommunications and other vital services running even if large numbers of people fall ill. And at a time when many hospitals in the United States are already at full capacity and keep few extra beds in reserve, Hong Kong has 1,400 beds in respiratory isolation units, mostly built over the past six years for fear that bird flu or SARS would become a serious problem, and 15 times as many beds as the territory needs on an everyday basis.

For a population of seven million people, Hong Kong has stockpiled 20 million treatment courses of Tamiflu, a medicine to which the new swine flu virus has not yet developed resistance. Hong Kong also has Asia’s best-known flu specialists and extensive research labs that were expanded in response to fears of SARS or a long-feared pandemic of bird flu, which is caused by a different influenza virus from swine flu.

Government lawyers are also moving quickly, carrying out all the procedures on Monday to make swine flu a disease for which health professionals are required by law to notify the authorities of any suspected case. The Hong Kong government also has broad and detailed legal powers to quarantine possible cases and suspend a range of civil liberties in order to track down anyone who has been in contact with a carrier of a communicable disease; many other countries, including the United States, are still debating how to handle legal issues during a possible pandemic.

SARS “gave us a lot of valuable insights and practical experience in managing a large outbreak,” said Gabriel Matthew Leung, Hong Kong’s under secretary for food and health.

Hong Kong is unusually vulnerable to flu. World Health Organization officials describe Hong Kong and its labs as their sentry for flu in Asia, because the territory’s tests may uncover infected people arriving from other places that are either unequipped to identify influenza or have a habit of keeping medical problems a secret.

Still, in a measure of the terror that SARS has left, the territory’s stock market suffered some of the heaviest losses in Asia on Monday on swine flu fears. The Hang Seng Index fell 2.74 percent. Shares of Cathay Pacific, the dominant airline here, dropped 8 percent and shares of mainland China’s Air China fell 12.8 percent on fears that many passengers will stop flying.