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Sars contagion reached peak Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5741508.htmhttp://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5741508.htm
Posted on Tue, Apr. 29, 2003
SARS contagion reaches its peak, agency reports
CHINA CRITICIZED FOR FAILING TO SHARE INFORMATION TO STOP SPREAD OF VIRUS
By Michael Dorgan
Mercury News Beijing Bureau
BEIJING -As the World Health Organization announced that SARS had peaked and is declining in Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada, Chinese officials continue to withhold information crucial to combating the spread of the deadly virus, the U.N. agency's chief representative in Beijing charged Monday.
``It's high time that information became available,'' Dr. Henk Bekedam said at a news conference, more than a week after China had promised to end the SARS coverup in the capital, where the epidemic is raging.
Fear of the pneumonia-like illness reportedly led thousands of villagers north of Beijing late Sunday to riot and ransack a school they believed was being converted to house SARS patients. It was the first reported instance of SARS-related violence.
Today in Bangkok, leaders from several Asian countries, including Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, on his first foreign trip, and Hong Kong's chief executive were to hold a one-day summit. The heads of state of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations are expected to endorse measures to reduce the spread of SARS, including an early warning system to alert Asian countries of outbreaks.
Beijing numbers soar
Since April 20, when Beijing's mayor and the nation's health minister were fired for mishandling the epidemic, the number of reported cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Beijing has shot up from 37 to 1,210.
That number, plus more than 1,300 suspected SARS cases, many of which will become confirmed cases in coming days, puts Beijing on a trajectory to quickly become the SARS capital of the world. Already, 59 people in Beijing have died.
During the past week, officials have taken drastic steps to contain the virus in the crowded capital of 13 million people. Nearly 8,000 people have been quarantined. Schools, nightclubs, cinemas, museums, libraries and many office buildings have been closed. People entering or exiting the city are checked for fever, a key symptom of SARS.
Yet nearly eight weeks after Beijing's first official SARS case was diagnosed, health officials have still not provided the WHO or their own residents with essential information about the epidemic, Bekedam said.
Health authorities have reported an average of nearly 150 new SARS cases a day during the past week in Beijing. But Bekedam complained that they still have not disclosed how many of the newly reported cases are new cases and how many are old cases tardily reported.
Without that information, it is impossible to determine whether the infection rate is growing, declining or leveling off.
Officials also have not provided key information on the pattern of cases, Bekedam said. That includes the crucial matter of whether a few large clusters at hospitals or universities or elsewhere account for the bulk of the cases, or whether they are scattered widely across the city. Also missing is data needed to profile the victims of SARS by age, sex, occupation or other factors that could help identify the groups most at risk.
Without such basic information, Bekedam said, it is difficult for health officials to design effective measures to contain the epidemic, and difficult for residents to know what precautions to take.
``You need to know more to be able to protect yourself,'' he said.
Initially, China's government withheld information about the epidemic out of an apparent fear that the truth would frighten the public and scare off foreign tourists and investors. Why it has continued to withhold information after promising to cooperate was not clear, according to Bekedam and other WHO experts.
One possible explanation is the government's unwieldy bureaucracy, which responds slowly. Another is that the government might still be trying to hide the full scale of the epidemic, despite its threats to punish any officials who underreport cases.
Alarm, gloom
The continuing dearth of honest, detailed information appears to have contributed to the alarm and gloom that have gripped the capital and beyond.
One widely circulated rumor last week -- that the government was going to seal off the city and impose martial law -- sparked a flurry of panic buying and food hoarding.
That was followed by rumors over the weekend that government planes would spray the city with toxic chemicals to try to kill the virus, which caused many to seal their windows. Workers continue to spray disinfectant everywhere. They have doused streets, sprayed the wheels of cars and flicked disinfectant in parks.
Sunday night, a rumor -- coupled with growing cynicism about government -- sparked rioting that ended with the ransacking of a school two hours north of Beijing, the New York Times reported.
3,106 cases in China
In Chagugang, an agricultural town northwest of the port of Tianjin, residents said that more than 10,000 people rioted after it was rumored that a four-story school building would be turned into a ward for SARS patients. Officials said Monday that it was to be used for quarantining people with possible exposure to SARS, not for sick patients.
As of Monday, China officially had 3,106 SARS cases. A total of 1,306 patients have been released from hospitals, and 140 have died.
WHO official Alan Schnur said Monday that China's top health officials, including newly appointed Health Minister Wu Yi, had pledged cooperation but that delays have resulted from ``internal management issues.''
``The statisticians doing the data have not been sharing with epidemiologists,'' he said, suggesting that the crucial information requested by the WHO has been withheld from China's own health experts.
South Korean health officials reported the first confirmed case of SARS today. The SARS-infected person is a man in his forties who returned from Beijing, unnamed health officials were quoted as saying.
Canadian health officials, fighting a World Health Organization advisory warning people against traveling to Toronto, said Monday they will install advanced fever screening devices at airports in Vancouver and Toronto to try to halt the movement of people with SARS symptoms.
Also, Indonesia reported its first probable death from SARS, a 56-year-old Taiwanese businessman who died Saturday in a Jakarta hospital nearly two weeks after he arrived in the country. Indonesian health authorities said he was only the third probable SARS case officials had discovered. India reported two new SARS cases Monday, raising the number of cases to nine in the country of 1 billion people.
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Mercury News wire services contributed to this report.
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