She Survived SARS, Now Leading Company Through COVID-19

By Todd Bookman

NH Public Radio 

Sharon Eng and her family during a vacation in Thailand in 2003. CREDIT COURTESY OF SHARON ENG

Most of us have never experienced anything quite like this moment. But Sharon Eng and her husband, who today own a manufacturing company in Belmont, happened to find themselves in the middle of another disease outbreak, on the other side of the world, in 2003. 

“My husband and I moved to Hong Kong in 1989, and we returned to the States in 2005,” said Eng. “So we got to see a lot of changes happen around the world. But in the latter part of our stay there, of course one of the most impactful changes, was when SARS hit.”

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The 2003 SARS outbreak was centered in China and Hong Kong. In some ways, it followed a similar pattern to the coronavirus: an unknown illness spreading through close contact, causing respiratory distress, and potentially death.

At the time of the epidemic, Eng and her husband were raising three small children. 

We had in Hong Kong been hearing about people in China boiling vinegar to ward off a strange pneumonia that was going around,” she said. “We sort of laughed it off."

“And then the virus spread.”

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