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Posted on 04/12/2003 8:30:22 AM PDT by EternalHope
SARS Spreads to China's Remote Inner Mongolia Sat April 12, 2003 07:11 AM ET
By Juliana Liu and Jason Szep BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Two people in China's remote northern region of Inner Mongolia have died from SARS, the Xinhua news agency said on Saturday, reinforcing fears about the disease's spread though the world's most populous country.
Ten cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) were reported in the regional capital of Hohhot, Xinhua said. The disease has infected more than 3,000 people and killed more than 110 across the globe since it first appeared in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in November.
Chinese and World Health Organization (WHO) officials were not immediately available for comment.
WHO's Web Site (http://www.int/en/) for the first time showed Japan among countries with reported probable cases of SARS.
The Japanese government said it had dropped its policy of reporting only confirmed cases, Kyodo news agency said.
The government also urged Japanese travelers to be careful on trips to Beijing.
Hong Kong and mainland Chinese health experts said they had confirmed that the virus in China was the same as the one in Hong Kong, debunking the assertion of some Chinese doctors that SARS came from a common microbe, chlamydia pneumoniae, a cause of pneumonia as well as sexually transmitted infections.
Like Hong Kong SARS sufferers, patients in China showed evidence of a new strain of coronavirus, best known as a cause of the common cold, the University of Hong Kong said.
WHO officials said on Friday the epidemic was being contained elsewhere in the world but that they were worried about China.
Nearly a month after WHO launched its first ever global alert because of the mystery disease that has created panic in much of Asia, the worst-hit region, WHO nevertheless said there were signs that SARS may have peaked.
Even in Hong Kong, which has the highest incidence after China, there were signs that local health authorities were beginning to win the battle, the WHO said.
But on Saturday Hong Kong reported yet another 49 cases and three more deaths.
"I think we are fighting a losing battle," said Peter Hung, a 33-year-old Hong Kong security guard. "The number of cases has shot up again and you can see the pattern that more and more people who have been infected are from the wider community.
"I think the chances of me getting it are about 50/50," Hung said through his heavy duty facemask.
JANGLED NERVES
Singapore warned its residents on Saturday that SARS would not go away overnight but said it was learning to live with the illness after reporting 39 new cases in a week.
But as the government moved to calm jangled nerves, an outbreak of the virus at the nation's biggest hospital showed little sign of abating.
The government said late on Friday that six more people had been infected by SARS while either visiting or working at Singapore General Hospital, bringing the number of confirmed cases at the sprawling complex to 25 in a week.
Singapore has the world's fourth-highest number of cases.
The rash of new infections has been traced to an elderly Chinese man whose multiple ailments -- including chronic kidney disease and diabetes -- masked symptoms of SARS as he unwittingly coughed or sneezed it on to doctors, nurses, patients and guests.
Authorities believe SARS is caused by a type of coronavirus, a relative of the common-cold virus, which could be expected to spread like other cold and flu viruses through infected droplets.
The elderly man, dubbed a "super spreader," may have infected as many as 52 people, the government said.
But the government said it had beefed up its defenses against the virus in the past two days.
"We are now better able to cope with SARS," Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defense Teo Chee Hean said in a speech. "SARS will not go away overnight and we cannot be isolating ourselves."
SHOPPING CROWDS
Such reassurances appear to have instilled some confidence. Several shops reported trade was recovering as crowds again swelled on the main shopping street, Orchard Road.
"It is pretty much better than the last two weeks but it has been very bad during the weekdays; it seems like people tend to go home straight after work," said Dylan Lim, a 21-year-old sales assistant in a shoe shop on Orchard Road.
Nurses and air force paramedics at the main airport, armed with the power to quarantine, are now taking the temperature of all travelers from Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province, two areas hit hardest by SARS.
Sick-looking people from SARS-hit regions are already quizzed on their health while stepping into Singapore, and two women who had arrived from Hong Kong and China on Thursday are now quarantined as suspected SARS cases. (Additional reporting by Richard Waddington in Geneva and Rico Ngai in Hong Kong)
1. Inner Mongolia, a remote part of China, clearly has SARS. So much for Chinese claims of successful containment.
2. The biggest news in this article is that China has backed off their assertion that SARS was caused by a variant of chlamydia. They had previously expressed 80% certainty that chlamydia was the cause, but are now on board with a new viral variant from the coronavirus family.
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