Posted on Tue, Apr. 01, 2003 By Michael Dorgan Knight Ridder Newspapers

BEIJING - Faced with mounting criticism of China's sluggish response to a deadly new respiratory virus, a government spokesman on Tuesday denied a cover-up and lashed out at critics.

"We have nothing to hide," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jiancho said at a press conference where he was peppered with questions about the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which began in southern China in November and has spread to more than a dozen countries, including the United States.

"We have made tremendous efforts to control the disease," Liu said.

Liu's comments came a day after the Asian Wall Street Journal published an editorial calling for other countries to cut all travel links to China until it more aggressively combats the epidemic, which has severely sickened 1,804 people worldwide, killing 62.

"Given Beijing's refusal to take even elementary public health measures, a difficult decision must be made," the editorial said. "The most effective way to halt the spread of the disease would be for other countries to suspend all travel links with China until Beijing has implemented a public health campaign."

It's unlikely that countries will cut off travel to China. But several countries, including the United States, have issued warnings about travel to China and other Asian destinations hard hit by the epidemic.

On Tuesday, an American Airlines flight from Tokyo was quarantined at San Jose, California's Mineta airport after five people complained of SARS-like symptoms.

Japan has no confirmed SARS cases.

Liu, the Chinese government spokesman, said travel warnings were unnecessary. He said foreign tourists and business travelers were "safe in China" because "the disease is well under control."

As Liu defended China's response to the new disease, the first documented cases of which appeared in China's southern Guangdong Province, a team of World Health Organization experts that had been dispatched to Beijing twiddled their thumbs awaiting crucial data and clearances from the Chinese government.

"I can't explain the slowness right now for more up-to-date surveillance numbers," team-member Dr. Robert Breiman, an infectious disease specialist, said in an interview.

Breiman and four other WHO experts arrived in Beijing more than a week ago.

Yet he said Tuesday evening that Chinese officials had still not provided them any data on cases that have occurred in Guangdong over the past month.

Equally frustrating to Breiman and his colleagues, Chinese officials still had not approved an urgent request made Friday to allow team members to travel to Guangdong to conduct what they describe as essential on-site research into the origin and transmission of the virus.

Experts believe the virus belongs to the coronavirus family, which typically attacks animals but not humans. But much more must be known about the new strain, they say, before it can be effectively contained.

China's official silence prevailed until last Wednesday, when the government disclosed that there had been nearly 800 cases in Guangdong, including 31 deaths, as of "late February." The government also disclosed 10 cases, including three deaths, in Beijing.

Since the arrival of the WHO team in Beijing early last week, the number of SARS cases in Hong Kong, a so-called special administrative region of China, has exploded to more than 600, causing 15 deaths and near panic.

All Hong Kong schools have closed, and more than 2,000 people are in quarantine. Tourists have fled, flights have been canceled and hotel occupancies have plunged - raising fears of dire economic consequences.

Many suspect that China hoped to avoid such economic consequences by imposing a virtual news blackout on the epidemic and withholding data from the global coalition of health groups combating the outbreak.

No data on the epidemic in China was released until Feb. 10, when Guangdong officials disclosed 305 cases of SARS, including five deaths.

On Friday, the WHO team called a press conference to announce that their negotiations had produced a breakthrough and that Chinese officials had agreed to provide timely data on all cases in China.

Late Tuesday, the team was still waiting.

"Hopefully, they are not hiding (data) but having trouble reconciling numbers from different sources," Breiman said.

He added that the Chinese government might be doing itself a disservice by not being more forthcoming. Chinese health workers appear to have done "some nice work" in containing the epidemic on Guangdong, he said, yet the absence of data arouses suspicions.

The Strait Times

SINGAPORE -- Singapore airport authorities said on Tuesday that nurses examining arriving passengers had intercepted at least seven suspected cases of a deadly flu-like illness in less than 24 hours.

Nurses are expected to screen about 35 flights a day arriving from places the World Health Organization has identified as high risk areas, including Vietnam, Hongkong and China. -- AP

Seven nurses clad in yellow hospital gowns and surgical masks were the first to greet passengers on a flight from Beijing as soon as they stepped into the terminal from the boarding bridge, as airport officials gave reporters a glimpse at the new measures.

Nurses identified the seven suspected cases in the first 20 hours after the Health Ministry posted them at the main airport on Monday at 8 pm to try to halt the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, said Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore spokesman Albert Tjoeng.

Singapore's Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang has said that the disease likely entered Singapore through the airport. 6th Index case

Singapore on Tuesday reported a sixth imported Sars case, including three new cases of infection, raising the Republic's reported cases to 95.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said the latest index case involved a 56-year-old Chinese national who arrived from China's Fujian province near Guangdong on March 16 to visit her daughter.

'She became unwell on March 28 and was admitted to Tan Tong Seng Hospital as a suspect Sars case on March 29,' it said.

She has since been 'diagnosed as a Sars case,' it said, adding home quarantine orders are being issued.

All of Singapore's 92 reported cases of Sars can be traced back to five people who had traveled to Hongkong. Four people have died of Sars in Singapore.

Arriving passengers -- some wearing surgical masks of their own -- filed quickly past as the nurses asked them how they were feeling.

'If we suspect a case or think a person is not feeling well, we give them a mask and take them to hospital,' Mr Tjoeng said.

Nurses are expected to screen about 35 flights a day arriving from places the World Health Organization has identified as high risk areas, including Vietnam, Hongkong and China, according to the civil aviation authority.

Airport cleaners were seen disinfecting all railings and counters, a procedure that is repeated at least four times a day, Mr Tjoeng said.

Also on Tuesday, DBS Group, one of Southeast Asia's largest banks, suspended all travel to Sars-affected areas after an employee in Hongkong became infected with the illness.

Techno artist Moby cancelled a concert scheduled to take place in Singapore on Tuesday and a show in Hongkong, citing the outbreak. The annual Singapore Business Awards ceremony planned for Thursday was also postponed.

In Kuala Lumpur meanwhile, Malaysia's health authorities on announced the country's first suspected Sars cases, the official Bernama news agency reported.

Health ministry director general Mohamad Taha Arif was quoted as saying that eight people with suspected Sars had been admitted to hospital for tests. A 37-year-old woman has been in hospitalised in Johor, while the other seven cases were reported in and around Kuala Lumpur, he said. -- AP, AFP

The Strait Times APRIL 1, 2003 TUE

HONGKONG -- Struggling to contain the worldwide spread of the deadly flu-like illness that has killed at least 62 people, worried Asian governments on Tuesday ordered tougher infection screening of air travellers and imposed other emergency measures.

Badly-hit Hongkong said it might open rural camps to quarantine people who have been possibly exposed.

Taiwanese nationals arriving in Taiwan's Kinmen Island from mainland China are greeted by a quarantine official, who distributes questionnaire forms and surgical masks. -- AP

Authorities in China meanwhile urged physicians treating cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, to disinfect everything they touch and wear 12-layer surgical masks.

Thailand's government invoked an emergency regulation to give health officials the authority to quarantine arriving travellers, suspected of having the illness, for up to 14 days.

Scientists have yet to identify the disease that has sickened more than 1,600 on three continents and they are working hard to find a cure.

Its initial symptoms include fever, dry cough and shortness of breath. Most victims have been in Asia. Hongkong doctors say some have responded well to antibodies from others who recovered from the disease.

Also on Tuesday, Australia announced its first case -- a man who had been to Singapore where tough quarantine measures are now in place. He had recovered and the illness has not spread, health authorities said.

Taiwan banned boats from sailing between an outlying island chain and mainland China, where the disease was first detected in November.

Four recreational activity camps in rural Hongkong areas could be turned into quarantine centres if the Health Department decides it's necessary, said Mr Gordon Tam, a spokesman for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people remained confined inside a badly-hit Hongkong apartment building. Health officials on Monday sealed off the building in the 19-tower apartment complex, Amoy Gardens.

Authorities said 213 residents of the entire complex remained hospitalised, though by Tuesday, just 185 had shown Sars symptoms.

More than 600 people have been infected In Hongkong and 15 have died.

In Canada, where a health emergency has been declared in Ontario province, Toronto authorities reported that at least two children had been hospitalised with the disease, and three others had symptoms.

Taiwan temporarily banned shipping traffic between the Chinese mainland and the Matsu Islands, 9 km off China's southern coast -- because the islands' clinics wouldn't be able to cope with a major outbreak, the government said on Monday.

Taiwan's known Sars cases remained at 13 on Tuesday, while authorities issued more than 800 quarantine orders to people who had come into contact with patients.

Also, the Olympic Council of Asia decided to shift the site of its April 22-23 meeting from Vietnam, where four people have died from Sars, to Thailand, an official of the Thai National Olympic Council said.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that experts hope to pinpoint the cause soon, and signs continue to point to the coronavirus, which causes about one-fifth of all colds.

In a new and perplexing twist, the germ inside the Hongkong apartment building seemed to be spreading vertically, a WHO official said on Monday.

'They are finding that the infections are in people living in apartments on top of each other, only in one area of this apartment block,' virologist Klaus Stohr said at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

That differs from the pattern seen earlier at the Metropole Hotel in Hongkong, where the disease spread when people who spent time on the ninth floor in late February were infected by a sick mainland Chinese medical professor.

'That was horizontal, and now you have a vertical connection,' Mr Stohr said. 'You can talk about water pipes and sewage pipes, about drafts which move up and down - that's pure speculation. These are hypotheses that are being looked into.'

Before the quarantine was imposed, many residents of the apartment building had fled in fear as dozens of people became sick, raising the possibility that Sars could spread further. The other 18 buildings in the complex were not sealed off despite having multiple Sars cases, but Hongkong's health secretary, Dr Yeoh Eng Kiong, said no other buildings were hit as badly.

'If isolation is effective to control the spread of the disease, we can say that this decision came too late,' said Professor Leung Ping Chung, an orthopedic and traumatology professor who has been monitoring the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hongkong, where dozens of staff have been sickened. -- AP

The Strait Times APRIL 1, 2003 TUE

SINGAPORE -- Singapore's Education Minister said on Tuesday he would close a technical education college at least until the end of the week to help stop the spread of a mystery illness that has killed four so far.

Education Minister Teo Chee Hean told a news conference late on Tuesday that he had decided to shut down Ngee Ann Polytechnic for at least a week starting on Wednesday. Advertisement

He said the closure would be reviewed and could be extended longer.

The Health Ministry reported three new cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, on Tuesday -- bringing the country's total to 95. Four people have died of it in Singapore.

Rear-Adm (NS) Teo said he would consider extending previously announced school closures and he could call other post secondary schools to be temporarily shut down in the next few days.

He announced the closure of all schools from day care centres to junior colleges on March 26, but at the time stressed that the decision was made to calm parents -- not on medical grounds.

Shutting down Ngee Ann will affect some 13,000 to 14,000 students, he noted.

Also at the news conference, health authorities said the number of people under home quarantine currently was 977. As many as 1,500 people have been under quarantine in recent days. -- AP

Singapore Undergrads asked to reveal trips to hotspots 7 suspected Sars cases identified at Changi airport

The news observer Tuesday, April 1, 2003 9:55PM EST By KIM CURTIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Five passengers on a flight from Tokyo were cleared of a mystery illness from Asia after the jetliner was stopped on the tarmac in what first looked like a public health emergency.

American Airlines Flight 128 from Tokyo to San Jose stopped short of the gate and was flanked by ambulances after the airline alerted the San Jose airport about the scare, said Todd Burke, a spokesman for the airline. After 10 hours in the air, the 125 passengers and 14 crew members waited as health officials in surgical masks came on board.

But when doctors had cleared all five people hours later, the situation turned into a testament to fears surrounding little-understood severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which has killed more than 60 people worldwide.

"It took a tremendous amount of resources to do this," said Dr. Karen Smith, the Santa Clara County health officer who boarded the plane. "If every flight from Asia has someone coughing on it and has to go through the same procedure, I just don't see how that's feasible."

Doctors cleared two passengers on board and sent three others to a hospital. Those three did not appear particularly ill and were quickly discharged, said Tad Hurst, an emergency room doctor at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

Of primary concern was whether they had spent time in areas where SARS outbreaks have occurred - in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Hanoi, Vietnam. Initial reports were that four of the five who reported feeling sick may have boarded in Tokyo after flying from Hong Kong, said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Public Health Department.

More than 1,600 cases of the illness have been reported so far worldwide, including 69 cases in the United States. None of the U.S. cases have been fatal.

Last week, evidence surfaced that SARS can be caught on airplanes. Hong Kong authorities said several tourists on a China Air flight caught the disease after flying with another SARS-infected passenger.

related  WHO discourages travel to Hong Kong, Chinese province suffering SARS outbreak  Spread of SARS provokes worry in U.S.  Chinese province Guangdong reports 9 SARS deaths  SARS illness curbs travel to Asia  SARS kills 2 more in Canada  Hong Kong sends SARS victims to quarantine camps