A girl wearing a surgical mask at a railway station in southern China, where panic has spread over an unidentified virus
Posted on 02/11/2003 3:40:14 PM PST by MadIvan
A girl wearing a surgical mask at a railway station in southern China, where panic has spread over an unidentified virus |
About 300 people were in hospital with pneumonia caused by the virus, one-third of them doctors, nurses and other health workers, an official of the provincial Disease Prevention and Control Centre said.
But doctors said that so far only five people had died and not the hundreds suggested by residents in Guangdong Province near Hong Kong.
“The disease is under control. It’s not as serious as the rumours said. The priority now is to figure out what caused it,” a doctor at the No 1 Hospital of the Guangzhou Medical School said. “We did not realise it was a serious epidemic, so we did not take it seriously at the beginning.”
Shoppers cleared stores of antibiotics and queued to pay inflated prices for vinegar, which many Chinese use as a disinfectant.
The panic also affected regional stock exchanges, with shares of drug companies rising, outdone only by a few vinegar-makers.
The identity of what is believed to be a virus linked to pneumonia is still not known. Leading Communist Party officials in Guangdong Province yesterday ordered an emergency team of experts to start a belated fight against the illness, which was first detected two months ago.
Governments in Hong Kong and Macau have also pleaded with residents not to panic, a likely response as the region has repeatedly been struck by deadly viruses in recent years.
Southern China is a significant source of new strains of influenza and other viruses that are often traced to the poultry industry. Bird flu in Hong Kong in 1997 killed six people and prompted the slaughter of all of its 1.4 million chickens.
Chemists and traditional Chinese herbal medicine stores reported dwindling stocks in Hong Kong as the rumours from Guangdong quickly spread. But Yeoh Engkiong, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Health and Welfare, said that there was no evidence that it was affecting the city. Neither pneumonia nor influenza cases had increased, he said. Nonetheless, television showed residents queuing for vinegar.
The Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Corporation said that it had sent hundreds of boxes of anti-flu medication to pharmacies and hospitals since Saturday and was working around the clock to meet demand.
Anti-inflammatory medicines were also selling briskly. “They’re almost completely out of stock,” the Xinhua state news agency said. The agency discounted reports that the virus was related to anthrax.
Interesting you could call the info on the page as bad as the ChiCom propaganda when you couldn't read it.
Why didn't you answer me when I ask you what you meant then?
I am only pointing out that you downplayed the situation and harshly critcized accurate information.
And then today you talked about it, so I thought I'd point out your track record was not good.
If in the first place you'd been civil and answered me way back when, this could have been cleared up.
As it was it seemed as if you were slamming accurate info and my post -- which was accurate information very early on -- as bogus.
It was not appreciated on my part and was a disservice to others. <P
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