China on SARS Emergency Footing After New Suspected Case

China on Friday placed its borders on an emergency footing against SARS after finding the first two suspected cases in the country since last year’s deadly outbreak.

China on Friday placed its borders on an emergency footing against SARS after finding the first two suspected cases in the country since last year’s deadly outbreak. China had learned from last year’s epidemic and would keep the public alerted, Vice Minister of Health Zhu Qinsheng said after attending a meeting of health ministers Southeast Asia, Japan South Korea and China in the northern Malaysian state of Penang. China’s State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine issued a circular ordering the quarantine of anyone found with a fever at the border. Zhu confirmed China had found two suspected SARS cases, one in Beijing and the other in eastern Anhui Province. One patient was a 20-year-old nurse from Beijing’s Jiangong Hospital, who was in an isolation ward in Beijing’s Ditan Hospital, he said. A final report on the second case, involving a 26-year-old woman, had not yet been released, Zhu said in a report carried by Malaysia’s Bernama news agency. “We learned from the experience of last year’s SARS outbreak and this time we will do our best and immediately alert the public. We are confident that the situation will be under control,” he was quoted as saying. “We are prepared. We are confident that SARS will not spread like it did in the past,” he told reporters. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is a type of atypical pneumonia that first emerged in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong late in 2002, spread to Hong Kong, Beijing and on to more than 30 countries, infecting about 8,000 people and killing nearly 800. The Beijing government said Ditan hospital was well prepared to deal with the case and three wards had been cleared and disinfected for other possible SARS patients. “According to the Ministry of Health, the patient…has been examined twice by a medical team of the ministry,” Xinhua said. Authorities have placed 171 people who had close contact with Li under medical observation.Five have shown symptoms of SARS and been isolated. Hong Kong Cable Television said the woman in Anhui had fallen sick in the provincial capital, Hefei, on March 25 and 88 people who had had close contact with her had been isolated. China confirmed four cases of SARS in Guangdong early this year, the first since a world outbreak was declared over in July. All have since recovered. The possibility of another outbreak comes a year after the new leadership, headed by President Hu Jintao, took dramatic steps to end an official cover-up of the spread of the disease. In April 2003, they declared war on the disease, sacked the health minister and the Beijing mayor, ordered open and accurate reporting of SARS and mobilized health workers across the country to set up checkpoints to halt its spread. (Source: Reuters Health News, April 2004)