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SARS Spreading Fast in Taiwan, Which Fights to Contain It
By KEITH BRADSHER with ERIK ECKHOLM The New York Times HONG KONG, May 2 SARS (news - web sites) appears to be spreading in Taiwan now as fast or faster than anywhere except mainland China, prompting a desperate effort by Taiwanese officials to contain the disease.
Taiwan announced today that it had 11 more confirmed cases, bringing the total to 100, a total that has more than tripled in the last 10 days. Five people died of the disease today in Taiwan, raising the island's death toll from the disease to eight.
That is far less than in Beijing, now the epicenter of the epidemic, where the city's chief epidemiologist spoke hopefully of a plateau in new cases, at about a hundred cases a day, though other experts were doubtful.
Taiwan's Center for Disease Control said that doctors were investigating whether 384 more people may have the disease; 97 of them are classified as suspected cases, while the rest are classified as less likely "pending" cases.
To contain the outbreak, Taiwan has resorted to quarantine measures as drastic as any in the world. Health officials have ordered 6,004 close personal contacts of SARS patients to stay at home for 10 days. Only a third of them have finished their periods of home confinement so far.
Taiwan has also banned visitors from Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore, while imposing a 10-day quarantine on its own citizens if they return from these places.
Almost all of those sick with the virus are medical workers, and Taiwan's quarantine program is aimed at containing SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, in the hospitals; Taiwan health officials repeated today their position that the disease is not yet spreading through communities.
But considerable anxiety is already apparent in the general public, said Andrew Yang, the secretary general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies.
"People are concerned that there still may be some unknown number of people out in the streets who may make the SARS situation worse," he said.
As elsewhere, the disease is also inflicting considerable harm on the economy, mainly by shriveling demand for businesses that provide services, like taxis and hotels.
Lian Chia-liang, an economist with J. P. Morgan Chase, predicted today that the Taiwanese economy would shrink by 1 percent in the period from April through June; earlier this year, before SARS, he had been expecting growth of nearly 2 percent in the quarter.
But Mr. Lian expects Taiwan's government to bring the problem under control by midsummer, allowing a recovery to start in the third quarter and reach full speed in the fourth quarter.
"I think it will be a short, sharp falloff in output, but technically not a recession," which would require two consecutive quarters of shrinking economic output, he said.
Taiwan's legislature approved today a $1.44 billion plan to offset some of the economic impact, mainly through financial help to businesses especially hurt by the outbreak. Mr. Lian said his forecasts included the benefits of the extra government money.
The problems in Taiwan come as the disease is still infecting more people in China.
But in Beijing the number of new cases dipped, and scientists there grasped for signs that may not get any worse.
Beijing's top epidemiologist said today that the spread of SARS may have reached a plateau at about 100 new cases per day. Other experts said the conclusion was premature.
Cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in China's suddenly overwhelmed capital may now have reached "a stable period with the upward trend contained," the official, Liang Wannian, the deputy director of the city health bureau, said at a news conference. "I believe the number of patients will drop in the future, but it's hard to say when because we don't know a lot about the disease," he said. Health authorities would be slightly relieved by solid evidence that SARS in Beijing now the epicenter of the global epidemic is not zooming higher each day. But international experts said they were not yet convinced because the city has not yet learned enough about its patients, whose numbers have climbed relentlessly from fewer than 350 on April 20 to more than 1,650 as of this morning, rising by 96 from Thursday. "I think we still need a far more thorough analysis before we can predict the path of the epidemic" in China, Henk Bekedam, chief of the World Health Organization (news - web sites) office, said in an interview. "In any case, a daily increase of 100 is no small issue." China, with a total of 3,799 cases nationwide reported today, including 181 deaths, has more SARS patients than the rest of the world combined, and the course the disease takes in this vast country will be crucial to the global battle against the disease. Health experts' biggest worry in China right now, beyond the crisis in Beijing, is the possibility that the SARS virus will storm through the country's hinterlands, where medical facilities are in no shape for stopping it. The World Health Organization is tripling its expert staff in Beijing, to 30 from 10, to help Beijing and provincial officials step up their data analysis and control efforts. The number of new cases in Hong Kong has been slowly dwindling, prompting Dr. Margaret Chan, the health director of the autonomous Chinese territory, to warn today against complacency. Hong Kong reported 11 new cases today, less that a third of its daily total a month ago, although still as many as Taiwan. But Hong Kong listed just 32 suspected cases today, far fewer than Taiwan. Many people who have been in hospital for weeks here are now succumbing to SARS, most of them elderly patients, often with previous chronic medical conditions. There were eight more deaths here today, compared to none in Taiwan, as the death toll here rose to 170. But some middle-aged people have also died, including parents. Carrie Lam, Hong Kong's director of social welfare, appealed to the public today to contribute to a fund to pay for the education of 24 children here who have lost at least one parent to SARS and, in some cases, both parents. Hong Kong is nonetheless trying to return to normal. After closing at the start of April, high schools and junior highs reopened last week. Arthur K. C. Li, Hong Kong's secretary of education and manpower, announced today that students in fourth through sixth grades were to return to school on May 12. The lower grades in elementary schools, as well as kindergartens and day-care centers, are scheduled to reopen on May 19. |
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