AFP: WHO Steps Up SARS Fight In China, More Provinces Declared No-Go Zones

May 8, 2003

(Clearwisdom.net) BEIJING- The World Health Organisation said on Thursday the fight against SARS had reached a crucial phase in China, where two more provinces were declared no-go zones and the death rate of the killer disease trebled.

The WHO issued an advisory warning against all travel to Inner Mongolia and Tianjin, and extended the alert to Taiwan's capital Taipei, which has seen a surge in deaths from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Experts at the Geneva-based WHO have said China holds the key to halting the global spread of SARS, which has now claimed more than 500 lives and infected over 7,000 people in around 30 countries.

The WHO last month issued warnings against travel to Hong Kong, Beijing and the provinces of Shanxi in the north and Guangdong in the south, where the virus is believed to have originated in November.

The latest travel advisories came as the WHO said it was increasing its estimated overall death rate from SARS to 14-15 percent from five-six percent, citing more comprehensive data.

Five more deaths -- including the first fatality in the financial capital of Shanghai -- were announced in China on Thursday, taking the nation's death toll to 224 with 4,698 infections.

Since China ended a cover-up of the extent of its SARS crisis on April 20, efforts to contain the disease have focused largely on the capital Beijing and built-up areas.

But the Chinese authorities and the WHO are now increasingly turning their attention to less developed areas. Investigators began fanning out across rural regions on Thursday, where mass outbreaks are feared.

A team from the WHO and China's ministry of health arrived in Hebei to assess the region's readiness to cope with an outbreak, and will later visit southern Guangxi region and central Henan province.

None of these areas has so far reported big numbers of SARS infections, although Hebei, a province of 67 million neigbouring Beijing, has seen its infections double to more than 100 in barely a week.

"The government is looking at the rural areas as an urgent area in confronting SARS so visiting Hebei makes a lot of sense," WHO team member James Maguire told AFP.

"It is next to Beijing, there are a relatively small number of cases but we want to see if the numbers are accurate.

"The floating population, the migrant workers, are another real cause of concern and it's very much a high priority to keep SARS away from them."

MaGuire said the concern was that the millions of returning migrant workers would carry the disease out of SARS-affected areas and into the countryside, warning the epidemic could explode if not checked.

"We don't know if we are already at this point or not but if we are not already there we are very, very close to being there," Maguire said.

The WHO travel advisory against Taipei, meanwhile, comes after the island's death toll rose sharply in the past week, reaching 14 on Wednesday.

In Hong Kong, the worst hit area outside mainland China, four more people were reported to have died and seven more cases were confirmed Thursday. Some 208 people have now succumbed to SARS in the former British colony from a total of 1,661 infections.

Singapore, another of the worst hit areas with 27 deaths, was buoyed after the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lifted its advisory against non-essential travel to the city-state.

In neighbouring Malaysia, which has seen two deaths from SARS, officials voiced optimism that they had "seen the worst" of the outbreak after completing two weeks with no new probable cases.

As well as China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, five SARS deaths have been reported in Vietnam, two in the Philippines and two in Thailand.

The only country outside of Asia to record deaths is Canada, where 23 people have died.

Fear of SARS has spread to China's European neighbour Russia, which was preparing to implement a total ban on flights to China on Thursday, when Russian health officials said they were almost certain they had detected the country's first case of the disease.

The Russian Civil Aviation Authority sent a telegramme to all airlines that fly to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, ordering them to stop selling passenger flights, air freight and postal deliveries to those destinations.

SARS has had a devastating impact on economies around Asia, with airlines, tourism, hotel and restaurant sectors taking a savage battering.

Australia's flag carrier Qantas Airways Ltd said it expected SARS to slash net profits this year by up to 30 percent.

The consequences for China's economy are also expected to be severe according to official media.

Reports said SARS was expected to hammer China's exports, raising the nation's trade deficit to between two to three billion dollars if the disease was not brought under control in the next three months.

SARS has also impacted severely on a wide range of cultural and sporting events worldwide, with several tournaments cancelled, postponed or moved.

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