More countries announce quarantines to halt spread of killer virus
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