Posted on 04/02/2003 3:30:21 PM PST by Prince Charles
BEIJING, April 2.
The death toll from severe acute respiratory syndrome rose to 75 across the world today after China reported nine deaths in March at the southern province of Guangdong where the disease is believed to have originated.
Shanghai today reported of the first SARS case. "A woman suspected of being infected has been hospitalised and isolated for treatment in the city of Shanghai," the official Xinhua news agency reported. The patient travelled to south China on a business trip in late March. Shortly after her return to Shanghai she fell ill with SARS symptoms. The Shanghai municipal committee of the communist party of China and government assured that they would keep the public well-informed of the matter, the report said.
In Beijing, WHO spokesman Mr Chris Powell said China's central government had invited an investigative team to visit Guangdong. The illness has spread, apparently from China's southern province, to more than a dozen other countries and prompted quarantines as far away as Singapore and Canada. The first cases were reported in Guangdong in November.
WHO has advised against travel to Hong Kong and Guangdong. WHO issued the advice as "we don't completely understand the means of transmission in Hong Kong. And since 15 March, tourists and businessmen have returned from Hong Kong to their countries with infection", Mr David Heymann, head of agency's communicable diseases unit said. There is no known cure for SARS, which has sickened more than 1,800 worldwide. Though there is no cure, health officials say, the majority of sufferers recover with proper hospital care. Symptoms include high fever, aches, dry cough and shortness of breath.
New Zealand health officials urged Maori tribesmen to forgo their traditional hongi, nose-rubbing greeting, for visiting Chinese at a convention. In Hong Kong, the Roman Catholic Church ordered priests to wear masks during Communion and put wafers in the hands of the faithful rather than directly on the tongue. Philippines President Gloria Arroyo today said: "We must try to keep out the disease as much as possible." Taiwan stepped up efforts today against a deadly flu-like virus, postponing sports and cultural exchanges with China. Fearing an outbreak, residents of Taiwan's Kinmen Islands, two kilometers off China's southern coast, have been asking the government to temporarily ban shipping links with China.
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