- HONG KONG/WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- The United States said on Tuesday it planned to reduce its diplomatic
presence in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China, because of the deadly SARS
pneumonia virus, and two more people died of the illness in Canada.
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- U.S. officials said the State Department was offering
free flights out to nonessential U.S. diplomats in both places because
of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus, which has affected almost
1,900 people in at least a dozen countries. At least 63 people have died.
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- The State Department was expected to announce its decision
and to repeat U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice that
people planning nonessential travel to mainland China and Hong Kong consider
postponing their trips, one U.S. official said.
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- In San Jose, California, officials quarantined a plane
from Tokyo on Tuesday in what turned out to be a false alarm after five
people arriving from Hong Kong were thought to have symptoms of the SARS
virus. Doctors eventually determined that none of the five showed signs
of the syndrome.
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- A hoax report in Hong Kong about the killer virus sparked
panic food buying and hit financial markets on Tuesday, and the territory's
government said it was placing more than 200 people in isolation camps.
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- In Canada, the virus -- believed to have originated in
China -- claimed the lives of two more people, health officials said, warning
the outbreak could get worse even as strict measures were imposed at hospitals
and airports.
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- Health officials in Ontario, the province of 11 million
people where most of the Canadian cases and all of the deaths have occurred,
said the latest victims were elderly patients. One died on Monday evening
and the other early on Tuesday.
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- The two likely contracted the illness at Toronto's Scarborough
Grace Hospital, where dozens of health workers were infected before the
disease was identified.
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- "We're doing what we can, and we're trying to be
ahead of it, and we're being proactive. We're hoping that will either slow
it down or end it at this point," Ontario's commissioner of public
security, Dr. James Young, told a news conference,
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- HONG KONG PANIC
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- In Hong Kong, where 685 people have been infected and
16 have died from the virus, the Web site hoax forced authorities to deny
it would isolate the entire territory.
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- "We have no plan to declare Hong Kong an infected
area. We have adequate supplies to provide the needs of Hong Kong citizens
and there is no need for any panic run on food," Director of Health
Margaret Chan told reporters.
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- The scare added to the sense of dismay in the territory
adjoining China's Guangdong Province, where the virus is believed to have
originated four months ago.
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- Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, reported
its first three suspected cases. One official said one of the patients
had died, but that could not be confirmed.
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- Singapore, which ranks third worldwide in the number
of SARS cases after Hong Kong and China, said three more people had been
struck as nurses screening arriving air passengers found seven sick enough
to send to a hospital.
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- Singapore Airlines Ltd., Asia's most profitable airline,
said it would cut 60 flights a week due to the spread of the virus affecting
travel demand.
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- PLAGUED ESTATE
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- As some supermarkets found frightened customers buying
canned and preserved foods, Hong Kong medical teams hunted for the reason
why 237 people in one residential complex in urban Kowloon had fallen ill
with SARS. The housing estate is home to about a third of all infections
in Hong Kong.
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- More than half of the patients in the complex came from
a single block. Late on Tuesday, the government was evacuating more than
200 residents remaining in the Amoy Gardens block, who were under official
quarantine since Monday, to special isolation camps.
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- "Of the residents (in the block), we suspect that
all have been in contact with the virus and it is highly likely that the
vast majority have been infected," Hong Kong Health Secretary Yeoh
Eng-kiong told a news conference late on Tuesday.
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- Finding the cause of the Amoy outbreak is critical because
it could prove or disprove a theory that the virus has mutated into an
airborne plague, which could infect many more people much more quickly.
Hong Kong had 75 new cases on Tuesday.
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- So far, doctors have believed the virus spreads only
when people get into contact with droplets or secretions from infected
patients, emitted when they cough, spit and sneeze.
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- The World Health Organization has now reported confirmed
SARS cases in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, the United States,
Germany, Switzerland, Britain, France, Ireland and Italy.
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