China spokesman denies SARS cover-up

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.