Jump in SARS Deaths; Airline Fears for Future (HK reports sharp jump in SARS deaths yesterday)

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong reported a sharp jump in deaths from the SARS virus on Sunday as Asia's fourth largest airline said it could soon ground its fleet if passenger numbers fell further. In a further sign severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was far from being contained in Hong Kong, the government said five more people had died and 42 more had been infected with the flu-like virus.

It was the largest jump in the death toll in weeks and raises the number killed from the virus to 40 since the epidemic began in the city in March. At least 1,150 have been infected.

The virus has been spread by air travelers to nearly 20 countries, killing 126 people and infecting nearly 3,200. Canada reported three more deaths. Singapore reported one death from the disease, with two more suspected.

The illness has crippled tourism in Asia and forced airlines to cuts flights sharply. Economists say the longer the crisis lasts the deeper it will eat into the region's economies and it could push some, including Hong Kong, back into recession.

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways said in an internal memo the company was losing US$3 million a day.

The airline is carrying only a third of its usual traffic volume and a senior official said on Sunday the company could not rule out grounding its fleet next month if things got worse.

"If demand falls still further we will have to respond accordingly," said Tony Tyler, director of corporate development.

"Clearly we can't rule out any particular course of action, but we will respond to circumstances."

Hong Kong's airport authority said 195 flights, or 37 percent of those scheduled, were canceled on Sunday. Passenger numbers at the airport have fallen more than 60 percent in recent days.

Canada, which has the third-largest number of SARS cases, said three more people had died, bringing the death toll to 13, while there were more than 270 probable or suspected cases of infection. Thousands of people have been quarantined.

Singapore's death toll rose to 10 and four new cases of the disease were reported but the government said primary and secondary schools would reopen on April 14 and 16, respectively, after having been closed since late last month.

SARS can lead to severe pneumonia and health officials say they are still not sure exactly how the virus spreads, although close contact with an infected person appears to be the main method of transmission. About four percent of the infected die.

The virus surfaced in southern China in November before being spreading to Hong Kong and elsewhere by overseas travelers. China has the highest number of deaths and infections.

Scientists say they have identified a virus, part of a family of viruses that can cause the common cold, but say it is new to science and there is no known cure. Diagnostic tests are still being perfected.

Fears of the virus have prompted affected countries to take dramatic control measures, from home quarantine for thousands of suspected cases, to banning tourists from China.

Malaysia banned Chinese tourists last week and in response Beijing has advised travel agencies not to organize tours to SARS-infected areas such as Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, local media said. It has not asked operators to halt trips to Hong Kong, however.

Late on Saturday Malaysia temporarily lifted travel curbs on visitors from Hong Kong, Vietnam and Canada.

The World Health Organization issued an advisory this month against travel to southern China and Hong Kong. The measure has further cut the number of people traveling to Hong Kong, one of Asia's main financial centers and top tourist destinations.

Hard-hit Cathay is carrying roughly 10,000 passengers every day, down from 30,000 in ordinary circumstances.

"We forecast that the number of passengers could fall to less than 6,000 per day in May, in which case we will have to consider grounding the entire passenger fleet," Nick Rhodes, Cathay's director of flight operations, said in an internal memo seen by Reuters on Saturday.

"We are literally hemorrhaging cash -- approximately US$3 million per day," he said in the memo, which was posted internally on Friday.

Tyler said Cathay had no plans to cancel all passenger flights. The airline has already cut 42 percent of its flights.

China says 59 people have died of SARS and more than 1,300 are infected. The illness has spread to a number of areas in China, most recently impoverished Inner Mongolia.

WHO officials have said the epidemic was being contained elsewhere in the world but they were worried about China and the ability of some infected areas to recognize and control SARS.

1:00 PM Edt
Channel 26 TNT Sunday, April 13

Outbreak
150 min.

Dustin Hoffman stars as an Army virologist in this 1995 thriller, which is so well-acted and breathlessly paced that it rises above its implausible script.

Hoffman and a team of scientists (Rene Russo, Kevin Spacey, Cuba Gooding Jr.) are desperately trying to contain the spread of a killer virus. The epidemic has decimated a small California town, and the scientists realize that they cannot find a cure until they locate the source of the disease---an infected African monkey. But first they must get past a military officer (Donald Sutherland) whose solution is to incinerate the town and everyone in it. Wolfgang Petersen directed. Ford: Morgan Freeman.

I haven't seen mention of it anywhere, but hopefully we are not allowing any plane/boat from that area of the world to enter the US. And if we are, the idiots that are doing so need a wake up call.

The world-wide death rate is 7%.

That isn't too bad. What is the world wide death rate of the flu?

The pandemic in 1919 killed 21,642,274 people world-wide. Mortality rate was 2.5%.

Makes 7% look a little scarier, huh?

The mortality rate is less than smallpox, but it's still extremely high. Some people don't get sick enough with the disease to require hospitalization, but a significant portion do, and many of them require intensive care.

If we're lucky, this illness will spread slowly, because we certainly do not have enough hospital beds, and certainly not in the intensive care units, to handle millions of cases.

from http://www.hkupasteur.hku.hk/hkuip/SARS.html

"As on April 12th it cannot be told whether the disease is spreading in a linear or in an exponential fashion. The increase in the recent days is a matter of great concern, since it suggests exponential growth. If the total number of cases reached 5,000 by the end of the month, this would suggest that the disease may have come out of control. Mathematicians at the Department of HKU are investigating the possibility that the disease would result from mutations derived from a rather innocuous highly contagious disease (with oral-faecal transmission route) that would have changed its tropism by mutation. This has already been observed in livestock in the past few years, with coronaviruses in particular."

One more death nail in the airline industry as a whole. Eventually we'll have to get used to living local, driving, or telecomuting as the planes will be gone. I don't fly, and am looking forward to increased alernatives to travel.

From "SARS batters Asian Economies"

Mr Brice says one of the major impacts is going to be on productivity, because people are much more conscious of how they work with other people, especially if someone coughs or sneezes.

In a human version of the computer back-up measures against the dreaded "Y2K" bug before January 1, 2000, companies are splitting up key teams and insulating them to minimise the chances of unchecked SARS contamination.

It looks like firms are activating their "Disaster Recovery" plans and going to split operations.

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