SARS fears prompt Singapore quarantine

Toronto Star ^ | Dec. 17, 2003

[CathyRyan]

Singapore's health ministry today issued quarantine orders to 70 people who may have come into contact with a Taiwanese SARS patient.

However, a Geneva-based spokesperson for the World Health Organization, Maria Cheng, said it was unlikely that the severe acute respiratory syndrome case could spark an epidemic.

"It looks very much like an isolated event," Cheng said. "He was travelling to Singapore but he was asymptomatic while there and, according to data we have, patients are not contagious while asymptomatic."

The Ministry of Health said in a statement that those 70 people may have been exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, through contact with a 44-year-old Taiwanese researcher who visited Singapore between Dec. 7-10.

The researcher was in Singapore for a medical seminar at the Defence Medical and Environmental Research Institute, the statement said.

Those who were possibly exposed must undergo home quarantine until Dec. 19, the length of the incubation period of SARS, and will be monitored three times a day by telephone, the statement said.

Singapore has also sent a medical alert to all medical practitioners, hospitals, national medical centres, and clinics advising them to "step up their vigilance against SARS," the ministry said.

But, the ministry added that it sees no cause for public alarm and that there are "no signs of new SARS cases in Singapore."

[Judith Anne]

Thanks for posting.