SARS puts strains on hospitals in Asia
IHT Thomas Crampton/IHT IHT Monday, April 7, 2003 HONG KONG Pressure mounted Sunday on health systems in several Asian countries as the mysterious killer pneumonia infected more healthcare workers and sent more victims to hospitals.
Doctors and nurses in Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam were reported coming down with suspected cases of the disease, highlighting the dangers of infection even among those most highly trained to protect themselves. The disease. known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, has continued to spread with suspected new cases reported in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Kuwait. In addition, Malaysia announced its first death.
Australia and the United States enacted measures to allow quick quarantine of anyone suspected of infection, while officials in Canada, which has suffered the largest local spreading of the disease outside Asia, expressed cautious optimism this weekend that an outbreak may have come under control.
The newly emerged disease has a mortality rate of about 4 percent. It has killed at least 90 people and infected more than 2,400 in 18 countries. Spread through contact with the spittle of an infected victim and perhaps other means, the little-understood disease can reduce formerly healthy patients to reliance on a respirator within days.
In Hong Kong, where authorities are battling a persistently rising number of cases, many residents spurned tradition to stay at home over the normally heavily traveled Ching Ming holiday. Usually, thousands of Hong Kong families tend their ancestor's graves during the holiday in Guangdong, the Chinese province where the outbreak began last November.
Just 127,000 people traveled from Hong Kong to Guangdong on Friday, compared with 270,000 people on the same day last year. Millions, however, are due to travel throughout China soon for the Golden Week holiday starting May 1. China's government has promoted the holiday in recent years as a way to increase consumer spending.
Heavily criticized for its slow and incomplete disclosure of statistics, China on Sunday announced the first death of a resident expatriate and made an extraordinary apology for botched efforts at combating the disease.
Pekka Aro, a Finnish man working for the Beijing office of the International Labor Organization, died Sunday, bringing China's official death toll from the disease to 52. While China reported 1,247 people infected with the disease, the government's lack of cooperation with the World Health Organization has left many skeptical of its statistics.
Chinese government statements that the outbreak is under control have been contradicted by officials from the World Health Organization who say the disease is still spreading in China. Reports by foreign reporters citing unnamed hospital officials have put the number of infected patients under treatment in Beijing at 50, more than four times the official figure. Breaking from the Chinese government's practice of never acknowledging mistakes, a top health official apologized over the weekend for failing to inform the public about the disease.
"We apologize here to all of you that our health departments did not have enough close cooperation with the media," Li Liming, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, said at a news conference in Beijing. "We weren't able to muster our forces in helping to provide everyone with scientific publicity and allowing the masses to get hold of this sort of knowledge." Having waited 11 days before giving permission for a team of specialists dispatched by the World Health Organization to visit Guangdong, the Chinese government continues to restrict the scientists' work. The agenda for the scientists has been set and controlled by Chinese officials, and by Saturday they still had not received laboratory specimen samples from the SARS cases in China.
Specimens are crucial for identifying the virus and controlling its spread. Since China lacks the technology for proper testing, the samples must be taken overseas or the equipment must be imported.
Robert Breiman, head of the World Health Organization team, said, "We've proposed that both happen and we're assuming that's what will happen. Orally, they've agreed. We're waiting for it to actually happen."
A persistently rising number of cases in Hong Kong has leading doctors warning that the healthcare system is headed for crisis. In addition to health workers themselves succumbing to the disease, more patients are being admitted with the disease than discharged.
The Hong Kong government reported 81 new cases and five deaths over the weekend, bringing the total infected to 842 and the deaths to 22. By Sunday 108 patients required intensive care, compared with 52 a week earlier.
Already wearing surgical masks and shunning public places, residents stepped up precautionary measures. Roman Catholic churches removed basins of holy water and worshipers, many of whom wore masks, were urged not to hold hands during prayers. In Singapore, where SARS has sickened 103 people and killed six, a doctor, 20 nurses and a midwife from Singapore General Hospital have been isolated after showing symptoms of the disease. The suspected infections came despite Singapore's quick creation of some of the world's strictest immigration controls and quarantine measures against spreading of the disease.