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Singapore confirms new case sars { September 9 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Singapore confirms it has new case of Sars
By Financial Times reporter
Published: September 9 2003 11:04 | Last Updated: September 9 2003 11:04
Singapore on Tuesday confirmed its first case of Sars in four months as further tests on a 27-year-old Chinese laboratory technician suspected of contracting the deadly virus proved positive.
However, the health ministry said it appeared to be a single isolated case. It was not yet known how the technician, a post-doctoral student who was studying the West Nile virus, contracted severe acute respiratory syndrome, the ministry said.
The man is being isolated at the city-state's Tan Tock Seng hospital, which has been designated as the centre for future Sars treatments.
Sars virus samples were handled at a lab at Singapore's national environment agency where the man worked but the ministry declined to speculate on whether he may have contracted the virus from those samples.
The ministry said the World Health Organization had told Singapore the patient did not meet the case definition for Sars under new guidelines issued by the UN agency. But Singapore is still treating it as a probable Sars case because two separate tests on the man proved positive, the ministry said.
Khaw Boon Wan, acting health minister, told reporters at a news conference that the man had no recent travel history and no known contact with any Sars patients. He also said the man posed a "low public health risk" because he was isolated quickly. Twenty-five people who came in contact with the man were ordered to stay at home and be quarantined.
"I don't think this is a repeat of the crisis many months ago," Mr Khaw said.
Market reaction to the news was broadly negative on Tuesday. The Straits Times index plummeted 42.14, or 2.60 per cent, at 1,580.14. Singapore Airlines, which saw its passenger traffic across the region fall during the Sars outbreak in May, led the decline. The stock was down 40 cents at S$11.10, off a low of S$10.90.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index closed down 118.46, or 1.06 per cent, at 11,046.82 in reaction to Singapore's announcement on Monday night that it might have a possible new case of Sars. Hong Kong had the second-largest outbreak of Sars after China.
Singapore was declared Sars-free on May 31 by the World Health Organisation but maintained a high level of vigilance against a possible resurgence of the virus which killed 33 people in the country and infected 238 others.
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