Posted on 04/01/2003 7:08:16 AM PST by per loin
Last Updated Tue, 01 Apr 2003 9:42:11
HONG KONG -
Medical authorities in Hong Kong are opening four rural quarantine camps to accommodate up to 1,000 people with severe acute respiratory syndrome
They are moving 240 people from Block E of the Amoy Gardens apartments to the camps on Tuesday night.
The building, one of a group of high-rise apartment towers, is the centre of the disease in Hong Kong, itself one of the three main sites – with China and Toronto – of SARS outbreaks worldwide.
Block E was sealed off Monday with barricades and police tape, and its residents told they would be quarantined for 10 days.
"Environmental factors" in the building may have caused the spread of the atypical pneumonia, said Dr. Leung Pak-yin, deputy director of health.
The Block E residents are moving to former holiday camps.
Hong Kong said Tuesday another 75 people were diagnosed with SARS, including 52 from the Amoy Gardens complex. It also reported its 16th SARS death.
There have been at least 63 worldwide. Hong Kong accounts for 685 of the more than total 1,600 cases.
Medical authorities in other parts of Asia were moving to clamp down on the spread of the disease.
Indonesia reported three suspected cases, Australia its first. China encouraged physicians treating SARS patients to take more precautions. Thailand gave health officials the authority to quarantine people.
| Time | Number of cases | Percentage increases | Number of current deaths as a percentage of case totals on previous days | |||||||||||
| Day | Date | New | Total | Day | Week | Deaths | Today | Day ago | 2 Days | 3 Days | 4 Days | 5 Days | 6 Days | Week |
| wed | 03/19 | 150 | ||||||||||||
| thu | 03/20 | 23 | 173 | 15.33% | ||||||||||
| Fri | 03/21 | 30 | 203 | 17.34% | ||||||||||
| Sat | 03/22 | 19 | 222 | 9.36% | ||||||||||
| Sun | 03/23 | 25 | 247 | 11.26% | ||||||||||
| Mon | 03/24 | 13 | 260 | 5.26% | ||||||||||
| Tue | 03/25 | 26 | 286 | 10.00% | ||||||||||
| Wed | 03/26 | 30 | 316 | 10.49% | 110.67% | |||||||||
| Thu | 03/27 | 51 | 367 | 16.14% | 112.14% | |||||||||
| Fri | 03/28 | 58 | 425 | 15.80% | 109.36% | |||||||||
| Sat | 03/29 | 45 | 470 | 10.59% | 111.71% | 10 | 2.13% | 2.35% | 2.72% | 3.16% | 3.50% | 3.85% | 4.05% | 4.50% |
| Sun | 03/30 | 60 | 530 | 12.77% | 114.57% | 13 | 2.45% | 2.77% | 3.06% | 3.54% | 4.11% | 4.55% | 5.00% | 5.26% |
| Mon | 03/31 | 80 | 610 | 15.09% | 134.62% | 15 | 2.46% | 2.83% | 3.19% | 3.53% | 4.09% | 4.75% | 5.24% | 5.77% |
| Tue | 04/1 | 75 | 685 | 12.30% | 139.51% | 16 | 2.34% | 2.62% | 3.02% | 3.40% | 3.76% | 4.36% | 5.06% | 5.59% |
| Averages | 12.44% | 118.94% | 2.34% | 2.64% | 3.00% | 3.41% | 3.87% | 4.37% | 4.84% | 5.28% | ||||
At least 63 people have died since the first outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was reported in November in southern China and then spread worldwide.
An 83-year-old in Hong Kong yesterday became the latest victim of the disease, about which much remains a mystery to global health authorities.
Officials said 240 residents of Block E of the Amoy Gardens Apartment complex were being moved last night to two camps, normally used for vacationers in the suburban New Territories and one on Hong Kong island.
The building had been sealed off yesterday amid fears that many people living there might be infected.
Earlier, officials said as many as 1000 people who might have been exposed to SARS could be sent to four camps in undeveloped corners of the former British colony.
In neighbouring China, authorities urged physicians treating SARS cases to disinfect everything they touched and to wear 12-layer surgical masks.
China's Foreign Ministry said British Prime Minister Tony Blair had postponed a planned trip to Beijing, but denied it was due to SARS fears.
Thailand's government gave health officials the authority to quarantine arriving travellers suspected of having the illness for up to 14 days.
Scientists have yet to identify the disease that has sickened more than 1600 globally and they are working hard to find a cure.
Its initial symptoms include fever, dry cough and shortness of breath. Most victims have been in Asia.
Hong Kong doctors say some have responded well to antibodies from others who recovered from the disease.
In Singapore, nurses posted at Changi airport identified seven suspected cases during their first 20 hours of duty.
They were screening about 35 flights a day from Vietnam, Hong Kong, China and Ontario province in Canada - all hit by the disease.
"If we suspect a case or think a person is not feeling well, we give them a mask and take them to hospital," said Albert Tjoeng, spokesman at the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.
Australia announced its first case yesterday - a man who had been in Singapore. He had recovered, returned to the UK and the illness has not spread, health authorities said.
In Canada, where a health emergency has been declared in Ontario province, Toronto authorities reported that at least two children had been hospitalised with the disease, and three others had symptoms.
Taiwan temporarily banned shipping traffic between the Chinese mainland and the Matsu Islands, nine km off China's southern coast - because the islands' clinics wouldn't be able to cope with a major outbreak, the government said.
Taiwan's known SARS cases remained at 13 yesterday, while authorities issued more than 800 quarantine orders to people who had come into contact with patients.
The Olympic Council of Asia decided to shift the site of its April 22-23 meeting from Vietnam, where four people have died from SARS, to Thailand, an official of the Thai National Olympic Council said.
The World Economic Forum postponed a meeting of international business and government leaders that had been scheduled for April 14-15 in Beijing.
The World Health Organisation said yesterday that experts hoped to pinpoint the cause soon, and signs continue to point to the coronavirus, which causes about one-fifth of all colds.
In a new and perplexing twist, the germ inside the Hong Kong apartment building seemed to be spreading vertically, a WHO official said.
"They are finding that the infections are in people living in apartments on top of each other, only in one area of this apartment block," virologist Klaus Stohr said at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
That differs from the pattern seen earlier at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong, where the disease spread when people who spent time on the ninth floor in late February were infected by a sick mainland Chinese medical professor.
"That was horizontal, and now you have a vertical connection," he said.
"You can talk about water pipes and sewage pipes, about drafts which move up and down - that's pure speculation. These are hypotheses that are being looked into."
Before the quarantine was imposed, many residents of the apartment building had fled in fear as dozens of people became sick, raising the possibility that SARS could spread further.
The other 18 buildings in the complex were not sealed off despite having multiple SARS cases, but Hong Hong's health secretary, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, said no other buildings were hit as badly.
"If isolation is effective to control the spread of the disease, we can say that this decision came too late," said Leung Ping-chung, an orthopedic and traumatology professor who has been monitoring the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, where dozens of staff have been sickened.
"And who can say for sure who should be isolated?" he said.
AP
From me.
I take this to be a confirmation of the reports that the building has poor plumbing.
What county and do you know of any others?!?
The most recent figures are from news sources. Pro-med runs figures that are a day or so old, and I recheck mine with theirs as those become available. The "cases" are only those hositalized, not those in the quarantine camps. I'd like to add hospital releases, but not much available on that yet.
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