By Jasper Becker in Beijing
26 April 2003
Independent (UK)
Every night, people in Beijing are stopping everything to watch a news programme Focus Talk (Jiaodian Fangtan) that reveals what new areas of the capital have been placed under quarantine.
On Friday night's list are the Carrefour supermarket, the Ditan Hospital, the Chaowai market, the Oriental Plaza, the 18th floor of the World Trade Centre – all famous landmarks in the city. Officially the government says 4,000 people have been forcibly quarantined but it could be many more.
Many believe city officials already armed with emergency powers may declare a state of martial law. But that merely means troops will be brought in to quarantine the city.
A new decree issued on Tuesday empowers imprisonment of up to seven years for those who refuse to comply with the orders of municipal or district health departments.
Cai Fuchao, a spokesman for the Beijing government, said: "I solemnly tell you it is rumour. We absolutely will not seal our airports and highways, and we also absolutely will not impose any sort of martial law."
The government now says Beijing has 877 Sars infections, up from 37 last Saturday, before the health minister and Beijing's mayor were fired for covering up the extent of the outbreak.
Among the reports not being publicised is the news of three deaths in a suburb of Beijing, the Gaobeidian area, where foreigners come to buy "new antique" furniture made by low paid chippies brought in from rural areas. A friend of one victim said: "Thousands of terrified workers have fled from the workshops. And when the news spread, lots of others left, too scared to be quarantined."
No one wants to be cooped up in an area where the mysterious virus is present but an exodus of migrant workers is going to make the disease impossible to control. Across the country, provincial officials in places as remote as Tibet are throwing up roadblocks and spraying vehicles.
In north-west China's obscure Ningxia Huizu Zizhiqu autonomous region, authorities set up 21 checkpoints along major highways, railways and airports to conduct medical examinations of Sars suspects. All motor vehicles in and out of Ningxia have to be disinfected.
Hospitals in Ningxia have designated special quarters for patients whose body temperatures are found to be higher than normal.
Although they have received 105 such patients, none has been diagnosed as having Sars. The fear that a greater health crisis is just over the horizon in rural China may prompt Wu Yi, the only woman in the 25-member Politburo who has been appointed commander-in-chief of the health campaign, to take much tougher measures.
Known as the "Iron Lady", she made her mark by running an extremely ruthless campaign to enforce the one-child policy in rural China and is believed to have the right experience for the job. She forced officials under her to forcibly arrest women and subject them to late-term abortions. She also ordered that peasants who had already flaunted the rules should lose their homes and livestock.
Outside China, the Philippines reported its first deaths from Sars and authorities in Taiwan quarantined over 1,000 doctors, nurses and patients in a hospital to halt the spread of the deadly flu-like disease.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) official said Sars could become a horrifying epidemic if it spread in China's provinces or in nations like India and Bangladesh, where people live cheek-by-jowl and medical facilities are poor.
"There will be various countries in the world where we would be really concerned because we don't think they have the capacity to stem the tide once it is introduced," the WHO official Wolfgang Preiser said in Shanghai. "It may have happened already, we don't know." Taiwan authorities sealed the Taipei Municipal Ho Ping Hospital on Thursday after more than 25 suspected Sars cases were discovered and doctors, nurses, patients and visitors will have to stay there for up to two weeks. Many were furious when they were informed. Some patients pasted signs and raised placards to the windows of the hospital in protest.
"Quarantining healthy people is against the law. Do not treat us like birds with bird flu or pigs with foot-and-mouth disease," wrote one patient.
Taiwan has strong business and ethnic ties with China and Hong Kong, but has reported only 41 probable cases of Sars. It introduced strict measures at airports and employs a liberal use of quarantine orders.