Hong Kong (CNN) -- In scenes that would not have been out of place in a Hollywood science fiction thriller, at dawn on March 31, 2003, armed police and Hong Kong health authorities dressed in biological suits, theater masks and surgical gloves descended on Amoy Gardens housing estate. Working swiftly on an order from the Department of Health to isolate Block E, the residents were sealed in. Under 24-hour medical surveillance, they could neither leave the block nor receive visitors, according to a report from the Hong Kong Department of Health. Later moved to confinement camps under quarantine laws that had not been invoked since an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1894, the residents of Amoy Gardens were locked out for 10 days as doctors, clinicians, sewerage experts and engineers scoured the block for clues.
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Hong Kong housing estate Amoy Gardens was center of 2003 SARS outbreak
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Authorities had to work fast to isolate the virus and quarantine residents
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The events at Amoy Gardens underscored the difficulties of containing epidemics
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Public information an important part of the fight against epidemics
But even before @placeholder could be quarantined, police were on a manhunt for 147 residents who had already fled the infected apartment block -- to hotels or to stay with family or friends -- possibly spreading the virus into the community.