SARS in Singapore--Key Lessons from an Epidemic

This article reviews lessons learned from the SARS outbreak in Singapore in 2003, and focuses on the containment and monitoring measures utilized. Large-scale home quarantine and telephone surveillance helped identify probable cases quickly, but required a significant effort to find a small number of cases comparatively. Daily temperature monitoring of health care workers led to early identification of SARS cases, but monitoring of children and travelers at the airports did not.