- HONG KONG/SINGAPORE (Reuters)
- Nine foreigners were in Shanghai hospitals on Friday with SARS symptoms
and Hong Kong reported two more deaths and 61 fresh cases as governments
across the world tried to stop the killer virus at their borders.
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- As the worldwide death toll from Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) rose to 114 and infected more than 3,000, Hong Kong began
quarantining relatives of SARS patients and Singapore's largest hospital
struggled to contain an illness that has no cure as yet.
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- The U.S. consulate in Shanghai said in an e-mail seen
by Reuters that two Americans were among nine being treated at the Shanghai
Pulmonary Disease Hospital with symptoms of SARS.
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- The flu-like disease, which originated in southern China
late last year, hit Hong Kong in March and has been spread around the world
by air travelers.
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- The virus has now killed 32 people in Hong Kong, which
has recorded about a third of all cases worldwide. It has especially hit
hospital staff, who have warned the Hong Kong health care system is on
the brink of collapse.
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- On Friday, Hong Kong began quarantining 150 relatives
of SARS patients for 10 days in case they, too, had been infected.
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- People in Hong Kong jammed telephone help lines to voice
their anxieties.
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- "Some are really scared that if they get the disease
they will be quarantined and lose their jobs because of that," said
Ida Ma, a social worker with Catholic help group Caritas.
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- "Many live in housing estates where infections have
occurred and they talk about how taxi drivers refuse to take them. Some
have even been turned away by private doctors."
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- Most of the territory's nearly seven million people now
wear surgical masks in public places and offices to ward off SARS, whose
symptoms include fever, cough and severe pneumonia.
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- "I have never seen anything so bad all my life and
I am very old. I don't know if I can live to see the day when I can walk
around without my mask," said grandmother Lee Ah-miu, 73.
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- HALTING GROUP TOURS
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- The disease has already delivered a heavy economic blow
across Asia, hitting hotels, airlines and the tourist industry. Analysts
have been busy revising down economic growth forecasts.
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- China said on Friday it was halting group tours to Singapore,
Malaysia and Thailand. Malaysia earlier announced it would no longer issue
visas to people from SARS-affected countries.
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- Two crew members on a Star Cruises luxury liner may have
been struck by the deadly SARS virus as the ship and hundreds of its passengers
sailed to ports in Southeast Asia, operator Star Cruises Ltd said on Friday.
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- The two crew -- an Indian man and an Indian woman --
are being treated as suspected SARS cases, one in hospital in Singapore
and the other in Malaysia's resort island of Langkawi, said Star Cruises
spokeswoman Lim Lily.
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- Hundreds of passengers leaving the ship in Singapore
were not medically screened or had their temperature taken, Lim said.
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- Singapore security officers fanned out across the city
state to enforce quarantine orders that affect 490 residents, mounting
Internet-linked "webcams" in homes and threatening to slap electronic
wrist tags on offenders.
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- Under a new regulation, all foreigners arriving from
SARS-affected countries to take up jobs in Singapore will have to be quarantined
for 10 days, starting on Friday.
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- Nine people have died of 133 confirmed cases in the tiny
city state -- a rate of 6.7 percent, above the global average of about
four percent. It has the world's fourth-highest number of cases.
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- Singapore General Hospital traced the origin of a mysterious
batch of infections to a man in his 60s, whose multiple ailments masked
the illness while he unwittingly passed it on to 19 people. Hospital chairman
Tay Boon Keng described the man as a SARS "super spreader."
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- WHO TEAM IN BEIJING
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- World Health Organisation teams were in Beijing and in
China's Guangdong province, the source of the infection, but WHO infectious
disease chief Dr David Heymann said they would like permission to look
further. "China is a worrisome area because (we) don't know what is
going on outside Beijing," he said in an interview.
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- The commander of the 37,000 U.S. troops based in South
Korea banned military and associated civilian staff from traveling to China
and Hong Kong because of SARS, the U.S. military said.
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- The United States widened its definition of people at
risk of SARS, saying people who passed through an airport in an affected
country should watch for symptoms of respiratory illness and contact a
doctor immediately if they developed fever or cough.
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- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes
its strict measures and broad definition of who is a suspected SARS patient
has helped keep the disease from spreading in the United States, where
there are 166 suspected cases in 30 states.
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- CDC and European researchers both said they had come
closer to proving that a new virus from the coronavirus family causes SARS.
They found the virus, which may have jumped from animals to humans, in
most patients with SARS.
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- The CDC has developed three tests for the virus and is
working to get a licensed version that can be used widely, although this
could take at least a week and probably longer.
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- Chinese doctors, in the meantime, recommend a traditional
potion containing dead silkworms and cicada skin as protection against
the deadly SARS virus, official newspapers said on Friday. (Additional
reporting by Maggie Fox in Washington, Syed Azman in Kuala Lumpur, Carries
Lee in Hong Kong and Tiffany Wu in Taipei))
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