UN: SARS peaks in some countries, still spreading in China
The worst of the Sars outbreak appears to be over in Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada, but the deadly virus is still spreading in China, the UN’s World Health Organisation warned today.
China reported eight new fatalities from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) today, taking the worldwide death toll to at least 332. About 5,000 people in more than 20 countries have fallen ill.
But there was also good news as UN heath chiefs said Vietnam had become the first country to contain the highly infectious disease.
David Heymann, the WHO’s chief of communicable diseases, said the situation in China remained the most worrying aspect.
“In China, as you know, we are receiving more and more reports of cases and it doesn’t appear it has peaked as far as spread” of the disease is concerned, he said in Bangkok, where he is attending tomorrow’s summit of South-east Asian leaders to discuss the Sars threat.
Hong Kong, Singapore, and Toronto are having fewer cases every day and Vietnam has reported no new Sars victims, UN officials said.
“It appears that the outbreak has peaked in those countries,” Heymann said.
Five more deaths were reported in Hong Kong today as many secondary school pupils returned to class in face masks. India reported two new Sars cases today, raising the number of cases in the country of one billion to nine.
Asian governments kept up the fight with quarantines and travel restrictions.
Taiwan began enforcing a 10-day quarantine for visitors arriving from areas hit hard by Sars, prompting airlines to cancel some flights there, while Malaysia sealed off a Kuching hospital they fear may be the site of an outbreak.
Sars has prompted a rare global alert from the WHO and travel advisories against affected countries.
But the WHO lifted all travel advisories today for Vietnam, which had five deaths from Sars after the virus spread in February through Hanoi’s only international hospital.
Sixty-three people contracted the virus in Vietnam. But the Hanoi French Hospital was cordoned off on March 11, a move credited with slowing the rate of infection and keeping Sars from spreading beyond its doors.
“The WHO would like to congratulate Vietnam on being the first country in the world to contain Sars,” Pascale Brudon, the country’s WHO representative, said in Hanoi.
No new Sars cases have been reported in Vietnam since April 8. WHO has set a 20-day window – double the disease’s incubation period – as the standard for lifting travel advisories and declaring that an outbreak is no longer spreading.
In Hong Kong, authorities said today that another five Sars patients had died, while 14 new cases were confirmed, the lowest yet since the government began releasing daily statistics last month.
The latest deaths in Hong Kong brought the territory’s toll to 138.
Hong Kong’s political leader, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, said the “downward trend” indicated that the territory’s battle against the disease was yielding results. But he warned against complacency.
“The situation is still not totally under control,” he said. “We must not take the disease lightly – we must not let up our guard.”
In China, health officials raised the mainland’s death toll to 140 today and said 3,106 people have been confirmed infected – an increase of 203 cases from the previous day’s figures.
WHO head Gro Harlem Brundtland said there was still time to keep Sars from spreading globally, through travel warnings and checks of travellers for symptoms like fever, dry cough and shortness of breath.
“We still have a chance to contain it and to have it go down in the places where outbreaks are already happening and avoid it spreading to new countries,” he told the BBC.
In contrast to Vietnam, China has been widely criticised for failing to respond earlier to pleas for action to contain the disease, which surfaced in the southern province of Guangdong in November and spread internationally via travellers from Hong Kong.
But officials there have been taking strong action in recent days, sacking Beijing’s mayor and the health minister and closing public schools in the capital.
Police in Beijing and nearby areas are stopping vehicles to check people for Sars symptoms, and at least one county has barred traffic from the capital in the hope of keeping out the virus.
The city closed its theatres, cinemas, Internet cafes and other public entertainment venues yesterday to ”stop possible spread of the Sars virus and ensure public health,” state media said.
Hundreds of builders were working around-the-clock on a new 1,000-bed isolation camp for Sars victims on Beijing’s northern outskirts.
