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Fears grow about how mystery disease spreads

By DIRK BEVERIDGE, Associated Press WriterMarch 26, 2003

Airline passengers, students fall ill

HONG KONG (AP) - Concerns grew Tuesday about how the new flu-like disease coursing through this city spreads, with passengers on an airplane and school children becoming ill.

The World Health Organization again said air travel is safe, but its scientists are looking closely at Hong Kong's growing number of cases to see if early theories on the contagiousness of the disease hold true.

In recent weeks the disease has spread beyond hospitals, where dozens of health care workers became infected, to schools, with at least four schools closed for several days.

Hong Kong officials also said Tuesday that nine tourists apparently came down with the deadly disease after a mainland Chinese man infected them on a March 15 Air China flight to Beijing.

If severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, can be more easily spread through the air - rather than through close contact with infected people, it could force travel and other restrictions to contain the disease.

"We would want to be sure that it was people sitting next to that person and not the ventilation system in the airplane which was spreading the disease," said Dr. David Heymann, head of communicable diseases at WHO. "We have no evidence of the latter right now."

For one thing, he said, health investigators have followed thousands of passengers who flew with SARS-infected travelers and did not become sick.

However, he said that if they find there are cases that did not involve close contact with someone sick or at high risk, "we will then be very concerned that this might have become airborne."

The airplane cases seem similar to how the disease got its start here - from one hotel guest who spread it to six strangers staying on the same floor. One expert theorized it might have spread through the air-conditioning system.

From the Hong Kong hotel, the exposed tourists took the disease to Singapore, Vietnam and Canada.

The disease has spread most rapidly through Asian hospitals, some of which lacked the surgical masks and goggles needed to prevent catching the disease from patients. WHO has been distributing such equipment.