Singapore experienced a large epidemic of hand, foot and
mouth disease (HFMD) in 2000. After reviewing HFMD notifications
from doctors and child-care centers, we found that the
incidence of HFMD rose in September and declined at the
end of October. During this period, 3,790 cases were
reported. We performed enteroviral cultures on 311 and 157
specimens from 175 HFMD patients and 107 non-HFMD
patients, respectively; human enterovirus 71 (HEV71) was the
most frequently isolated virus from both groups. Most of the
HFMD patients were