Hong Kong SARS quarantine may be too late, professor says

C B C . C A   N e w s  Written by CBC News Online staff Last Updated Mon Mar 31 14:21:44 2003

HONG KONG-- Health authorities in Hong Kong quarantined a 33-storey apartment building in the Amoy Gardens complex on Monday because of the number of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) cases there.

The decision was denounced as political by Leung Ping-chung, a medical professor who has been monitoring the spread of the atypical pneumonia through the staff of a hospital in Hong Kong.

"If isolation is effective to control the spread of the disease, we can say this decision came too late," he said. "And who can say for sure who should be isolated?"

Over the weekend, 58 of the 105 new SARS cases reported in Hong Kong were found in Block E of the Amoy Gardens complex.

Of the 213 people in the complex with SARS, 107 live in Block E, the World Health Organization said Monday.

Police sealed the building where about 240 people will have to stay for 10 days.

Hong Kong is the location of the second-largest outbreak of the disease, after China, but ahead of Canada, where Health Canada on Sunday reported 98 probable or suspected cases.

• FROM MARCH 30, 2003: Fourth SARS death reported in Toronto

Four people have died in Canada.

Researchers expect to identify the virus that causes SARS in "at most a few weeks," Hitosho Oshitani, the World Health Organization's SARS co-ordinator, said Monday.

He called the disease "the most significant outbreak that has been spread through air travel in history."

WHO said Monday that there are 1,622 known cases, and 58 deaths. That's up by 72 and 4, respectively, since Saturday, when the previous WHO report was released.