China Seals Hospital Over SARS, Canada Mad at WHO

BEIJING (Reuters) – China swiftly implemented its new policy of slapping a quarantine on SARS-affected areas by sealing off a major Beijing hospital on Thursday in a bid to contain the virus threatening to erupt across the vast land.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China swiftly implemented its new policy of slapping a quarantine on SARS-affected areas by sealing off a major Beijing hospital on Thursday in a bid to contain the virus threatening to erupt across the vast land. Hours after the World Health Organization advised people against visiting the city, police took positions around the 1,200-bed Beijing University People’s Hospital in the middle of the night to stop people going in or out. “No one is allowed to enter or leave,” a member of the 2,300-strong staff told Reuters by telephone. “There are policemen and security guards standing outside.” The hospital is not one of those set aside to treat SARS patients but it has at least 60 confirmed or suspected cases among nurses and doctors. It was the latest dramatic action by a government which declared war on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome last week, five months after the virus first appeared in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and started spreading around the world. There was outrage in Canada as the WHO added Toronto to a list of places to avoid because of SARS, in addition to Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangdong and Shanxi provinces. “Where did this group come from? Who did they see? Who did they talk to?” a visibly angry mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman, asked at a news conference, referring to WHO. “Let me be clear. If it’s safe to live in Toronto, it’s safe to come to Toronto. I dare them to be here tomorrow.” Canada has 330 cases of SARS and 16 deaths, most of them in Toronto, which has a large Chinese population. But most of the alarm was focused on China, particularly Beijing, where infections have soared this week. Mainland China has reported 106 of the 254 killed by SARS so far and more than half of the 4,500 infections worldwide. Beijing, a city of 14 million people, has reported almost 700 SARS cases and 35 deaths. Shanxi, which lies west of the capital, has the third highest number of cases in China, 157 cases with seven deaths, according to health ministry figures. In a worrying signal of the effect of the disease on business, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Toyota Motor Co could pull out its Japanese staff from Beijing. But the World Bank said East Asian economies should be able to weather the disruption caused by SARS, although it would have a severe short-term effect. Credit rating agency Fitch lowered the outlook on Hong Kong’s currency to negative from stable because of SARS and the toll it is taking on business in the former British colony where 105 people have died. “Now well into its second month and continuing to deteriorate, the SARS outbreak appears to be depressing economic activity in Hong Kong dramatically,” Fitch said. ANOTHER DEATH IN SINGAPORE Singapore reported another death from SARS overnight, taking its total to 15 known fatalities and two suspected ones. The city-state said all visitors entering and leaving will have their temperature checked at the airport or at land crossings. On Thursday, Beijing closed its schools for two weeks, affecting 1.7 million children, disinfection squads fanned out across the world’s most populous country and the highest ranked woman politician, Wu Yi, was named head of a SARS taskforce. She was given the title of commander-in-chief. Beijing authorities issued assurances that there was no truth to rumors that the city would be sealed off and that there was plenty of food in the stores. SARS, a respiratory infection caused by a relative of a common cold virus, has no sure-fire cure. It is spread by droplets from sneezing and coughing, but may also be transmitted by touching objects such as lift buttons. WHO fears that SARS, with a mortality rate that approaches six percent, may become a permanent human disease. Much of that worry focused on China, which admits the healthcare system is inadequate in the countryside where 70 percent of its 1.3 billion people live. Premier Wen Jiabao said the consequences of eruptions in rural China “could be too dreadful to contemplate.” “This is an out-of-the-ordinary test, a severe test facing China’s new collective leadership at the central level and the broad masses,” the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said of new party leaders installed only in November. (Additional reporting by Niu Shuping and Jonathan Ansfield in Beijing and Amran Abocar in Toronto)(Source: Reuters, Benjamin Kang Lim, Thu April 24, 2003 01:20 AM ET)