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Thousands quarantined in Canada; Taiwan shrugs off new SARS cases
Jordan Times, 5/30/03
TAIPEI (AFP) — Taiwan brushed off a sharp rise in SARS cases Thursday as authorities in Canada quarantined 2,000 more people in a desperate effort to contain a fresh outbreak of the killer disease.
Taiwan reported 50 new cases of SARS, but officials quickly insisted the figure did not conflict with a World Health Organisation (WHO) assessment that the island's epidemic was in decline.
Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said 10 of the new infections had been recently reported while 40 had arisen from the reclassification of cases previously listed as “suspected.”
“Today's figures did not reflect the ongoing SARS situation here. They were simply the result of an adjustment of the old cases,” a CDC official told AFP.
“Therefore they do not conflict with the WHO evaluation of the domestic SARS situation.”
The WHO said in an update on Wednesday that the disease now appeared to be in retreat in Taiwan, which has registered 81 fatalities from 660 infections of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
“The rapid growth in reported cases, partly caused by the clearing of hundreds of cases in the backlog, has now slowed,” the WHO said.
“With the backlog of pending cases now cleared, the low number of genuine new cases ... indicate that the outbreak in Taiwan has begun to decline.”
Over 750 people have died and more than 8,000 have been infected with SARS worldwide since the disease first emerged in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in November last year.
Asia has been by far the worst affected continent, with the region accounting for more than 700 fatalities and 7,000 infections among the global toll.
The mood in Asia has brightened substantially in recent weeks, however, with steadily declining figures in both China and Hong Kong — the two hardest hit areas — fuelling optimism that the worst is over.
Hong Kong, which saw a WHO advisory warning against travel to the city lifted last Friday, recorded only two new cases and three fatalities on Thursday. The deaths brought the total number of fatalities to 273 from 1,732 cases.
China meanwhile reported three cases and two deaths Thursday, marking a new low in official figures since Beijing ordered officials to stop covering up the extent of the crisis on April 20.
Officials across Asia have called for continued vigilance despite the apparent drop-off in cases and point to the SARS situation in Canada as evidence that the disease has so far proved lethally resilient.
Canada's death toll rose to 29 after two more patients from a newly discovered SARS cluster in Toronto died.
Canada has seen more fatalities than any country outside of Asia, and this week Toronto was placed back on a WHO list of SARS-affected areas after earlier appearing to have brought the disease to heel.
The latest cluster came as Toronto health officials were seeing SARS cases reduced to single digits and three weeks after the city was removed from a WHO list of areas to avoid travelling to due to the disease.
The outbreak could not have come at a worse time for Toronto as it geared up for a huge promotional campaign to woo back visitors.
Now, more than 5,000 people, including 2,000 associated with one school linked to an affected hospital who were isolated on Wednesday, are in quarantine as a precautionary measure to see if SARS symptoms reappear.
There is no vaccine or diagnostic test for SARS, which first emerged in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in November last year where researchers believe it may have been passed to humans from civet cats or racoon dogs.
In response to the research the the authorities in Guangdong said they had confiscated several thousand more wildlife animals from markets, restaurants, ports and border areas.
From early Wednesday to the evening, police and other officials in the province seized 6,800 wildlife animals, including state-protected pangolins and large lizards, an official with the province's forestry department told AFP.
“The campaign is mainly being carried out by the province's forestry department. We are dispatching more than 1,000 police officers and staff for this effort,” said the official Weng Xiuchang.
SARS has hammered economies in Asia, with the airline and tourism sectors reporting crippling losses.
Japanese airport authorities said the number of departing passengers at the country's main international airport Narita plunged by 44 per cent in May due to SARS.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) said tourist arrivals in April slumped 64.8 per cent from last year to a 12-year low because of SARS, while Hong Kong-based carrier Dragonair warned the airline would not make a profit this year.
US investment bank Morgan Stanley meanwhile warned that Singapore faced the threat of slipping into its second recession in three years due to the heavy toll exacted by the epidemic.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |