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Peaked everywhere but china { April 28 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47670-2003Apr28.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47670-2003Apr28.html
WHO Says SARS Has Peaked Everywhere But China
Disease Is Spreading on Mainland, Contained in Vietnam
By Dan Eaton
Reuters
Monday, April 28, 2003; 11:20 AM
BANGKOK - - The World Health Organization said Monday the SARS outbreak had peaked in Asia, except for China, where WHO demanded better cooperation from Beijing after it reported a rising death toll and hundreds more cases.
“China is the key and it’s the unknown question in the whole formula, because if China cannot contain it, then it can’t be removed,” said WHO’s chief of communicable diseases, David Heymann.
Swiss health care group Roche said it aimed to launch a diagnostic test for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome by the end of July. The move could help curb the spread of the virus that has killed at least 331 people since it broke out in China’s Guangdong province late last year and spread to dozens of countries.
More encouraging news from the SARS battlefront came from Vietnam, which Monday became the first infected country to be declared free of the flu-like virus.
Heymann told Reuters in Bangkok the spread of SARS had peaked in all countries known to have outbreaks, except China, which by Monday had reported a total of 139 SARS deaths and more than 3,106 cases.
“It seems that it has peaked in all places that we knew about on the 15th of March, except in China, and in China it’s on the increase, unfortunately,” said Heymann, in Bangkok to brief Asian leaders holding a meeting on SARS on Tuesday.
Heymann’s comments lifted financial markets in Asia, where economies and air travel have been badly hit by the outbreaks over the past two months.
The WHO issued a global alert March 15 about SARS, which has infected 5,510 people in nearly 30 countries.
China reported eight new deaths and 203 new cases on Monday, but WHO’s China representative Henk Bekedam said it needed more specific information from Beijing, which was criticized for its secretive initial response to the virus.
WHO was seeking more details on the types of cases, where they were occurring and who was getting sick, Bekedam told a press conference.
“We do think that it is now high time that this information becomes available.”
TAIWAN CLOSES BORDERS
WHO hailed Roche’s announcement of a SARS test, saying it could help health authorities to identify quickly who was infected and needed to be isolated.
Asked if he was confident that the worldwide spread of SARS could be stopped, WHO’s Heymann said: “No, we are not. We are hoping.”
WHO says SARS, a respiratory infection caused by a relative of a common cold virus, is spread by droplets from sneezing and coughing, but it may also be transmitted by touching objects such as elevator buttons.
Taiwan said it would close its borders to visitors from SARS-stricken China, Hong Kong, Canada and Singapore for two weeks and quarantine residents returning from those places.
In Indonesia, health officials said a man classified as a probable SARS case had died, the first such death reported in the world’s fourth most populous nation.
Hong Kong said on Monday SARS had killed another five people. But there were only 14 new cases, lower than the daily average of 20 to 30 reported in the past few weeks.
The WHO in Geneva said Vietnam, which has had 63 infections including the deaths of five medical workers, was now free of the virus after the last reported case on April 8.
The virus has hurt southeast Asia’s economy. Hotels, airlines and retailers already face slumping sales and hospitals are stretched to breaking point.
The Asian Development Bank cut its growth forecast for the region this year to 5.3 percent, from the 5.6 percent it expected in December, due to the impact of SARS and an uncertain global economic recovery.
But assuming the deadly virus can be brought under control swiftly with minimal damage to tourism, Asian economies -- excluding Japan -- should grow at a faster rate of 5.9 percent in 2004, the Manila-based bank said in a regional outlook.
Canada, the only country outside Asia where people have died of SARS, says the disease will hit an economy that has long been the star performer within the Group of Seven rich industrialized
countries.
(additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Beijing, Jerry Norton in Indonesia and Christina Toh-Pantin in Hanoi)
© 2003 Reuters
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