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Cases honk kong level off { April 23 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/international/asia/23HONG.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/international/asia/23HONG.html
April 23, 2003
Cases in Hong Kong Have Begun to Level Off
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG, April 22 — The number of people infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome has leveled off here in the last week, although the disease is unlikely to be eradicated for a long time, if ever, health officials said today.
Hong Kong has had more cases of the disease, known as SARS, than any other city, although Beijing is starting to catch up. There are still two dozen to three dozen new cases each day here, and Hong Kong still has almost as many people hospitalized with SARS as the entire rest of the world, including mainland China.
Yet there has been some improvement here. As recently as a week ago, some experts were warning that a rising tide of SARS patients could overwhelm hospitals, filling all of the beds in intensive care wards.
The State Department has warned that Americans who fall sick here or in China may find the medical systems already overstretched.
But the number of people in hospitals here with probable cases of SARS peaked at 960 on Thursday and has since fallen 9 percent, to 874 this afternoon. While 137 people have fallen ill with SARS in the last five days, 189 have recovered and been discharged from hospitals. Another 34 have died, most of them elderly.
Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's secretary of health, welfare and food, cautioned at a news conference this afternoon, "We do not anticipate it will be eradicated completely, because it is a highly infectious virus."
The death rate for SARS has been slightly higher here lately than the combined rate for all other kinds of pneumonia last year. But fewer people are falling ill with SARS than typically become sick daily with pneumonia in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, SARS survivors typically spend far longer in the hospital than other pneumonia patients.
A few tentative signs are beginning to emerge that residents are coming to accept SARS as a manageable risk and are moving on with their daily lives.
The Hong Kong International Film Festival is sold out for its last two nights, tonight and Wednesday, and an upper gallery has even been opened. The roller coasters and other attractions at the Ocean Park amusement park were fairly busy over Easter weekend. Park officials predict, though, that attendance for the full month of April will be down 80 percent from April of last year.
Most high schools reopened today after being closed for three weeks, although a few stayed closed in the hardest-hit neighborhoods. Junior high schools and elementary schools are to reopen on Monday, except for kindergartens, which will reopen at the discretion of school principals.
Some affluent Hong Kong residents who fled the city in late March and early April, when the disease seemed as if it might quickly infect thousands, have begun to return, especially families with children who need to resume classes.
In the passport control area of Hong Kong's airport, several dozen people waited on Monday night in front of the seven desks where immigration officials were checking the travel documents of returning residents, including expatriates with residency cards. But few tourists and business travelers are coming.
Many planes have been flying almost empty this month, despite the cancellations of more than a third of the flights in and out of Hong Kong. Rosita Ng, a spokeswoman for Cathay Pacific, the main airline here, said the last few days had been "more or less the same, if not worse."
Even face masks, a symbol of the alarm of Hong Kong residents for the last month, are becoming somewhat less common. Perhaps half of the taxi drivers are still wearing masks, despite city officials' requests that all do so, and a few passengers on public transportation are going without masks as well.
Benson Ng, 30, an accountant, is among those who sometimes travel unmasked now, even on the subway. Many people are recovering, he said, and tests for the disease are becoming increasingly reliable.
Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said that since the effectiveness of mask wearing by the general public had not been proven effective, reductions in use should not be a problem, as long as hospital workers remained vigilant about infection control.
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