China Pledges All Resources to Fight SARS

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s premier vowed that every resource would be used to stop the spread of SARS as workers in the south of the country moved onto the streets to stop the widely-prevalent habit of spitting.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s premier vowed that every resource would be used to stop the spread of SARS as workers in the south of the country moved onto the streets to stop the widely-prevalent habit of spitting.Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has infected almost 5,000 people in the country, originated in China’s south last year before spreading across the vast nation and overseas.Over 1,000 sanitary workers in the southern city of Guangzhou patrolled the streets to enforce a law against spitting or dropping cigarette butts in public as part of local measures aimed at stemming the spread of SARS, Xinhua news agency said.Doctors say spitting, sometimes referred to as China’s national pastime, can propel droplets to others and inadvertently spread SARS.Meanwhile Prime Minister Wen Jinbao warned officials they would be held accountable for any negligence over SARS.His comments, quoted by state media on Sunday, came a day after the World Health Organisation said it had still not received enough data on the spread of the epidemic in China.”Every patient must be treated, every contagious source must be segregated and every potential risk must be eradicated. No formality or pretence is allowed,” Wen was quoted as saying.”The fight against SARS is a severe test of officials, who must take full responsibility of ensuring people’s health and safety. No negligence or excuse is allowed,” Xinhua quoted Wen as saying on its Web site.At least 240 people have died from SARS in China and more than 4,900 have been infected, the bulk of the world’s total of more than 7,000.Wen voiced fears about the virus spreading further through China’s vast and densely populated countryside, where health services are ill-equipped to treat the virus, much less handle a major outbreak.”There is still risk of further expansion. In rural areas, there are channels and potential risk for the spread,” he said.MORE DATA NEEDEDThe WHO has said it needed more data from China to help stop the spread of the flu-like disease that has already sparked widespread fear and riots in the country.”We don’t have detailed information from China on about half of the cases, which would allow us to track SARS effectively,” said spokeswoman Maria Cheng.Together, China and its autonomous territory Hong Kong have been hardest hit by SARS. In Hong Kong, 215 people have now died from the disease.An expert who helped pioneer treatment for AIDS is now collaborating with a team of scientists in the territory to design a drug which they hope will control the virus, which has killed 525 people worldwide.Experts around the globe are racing against time to find a treatment but no one is expecting a quick breakthrough.”We have been testing these inhibitors in tissue culture to see if any of these anti-viral peptides (inhibitors) will block the virus,” said David Ho of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University in New York.Ho said the peptide had so far proved successful in preventing the SARS virus from entering cultured cells in initial tests but he added much more work and finetuning were needed before such a drug could be commercially available.After initially escaping the worst of the disease, Taiwan said on Sunday there were another 12 cases of SARS, taking the total number of infections on the island to 184, although the death toll stayed at 18.Authorities also said nearly 200 people from a Taipei housing block were violating quarantine orders and they had been ordered home or face hefty fines.There is no standard treatment for SARS and six to 10 percent of patients die from a disease that is mostly passed by droplets through coughing and sneezing.Air travelers have spread the virus worldwide and one took the disease to Toronto, where it has killed 23 people in Canada’s largest city, the only place outside Asia where people are known to have died from it — although Nigeria said last week a man from Taiwan had died there after showing SARS-like symptoms.(Source: Reuters, Juliana Liu, May 11, 2003 02:29 PM ET)