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Posted on 04/10/2003 4:00:24 PM PDT by Lessismore
HONG KONG, April 10 - In a striking example of how far and fast a virus can be carried in an era of international jet travel, health officials announced here tonight that a man infected with a newly discovered respiratory disease had flown from Hong Kong to Munich, Barcelona, Frankfurt, London, Munich again, Frankfurt again and then back to Hong Kong before entering a hospital.
The Hong Kong Department of Health appealed tonight for passengers and air crews from all seven flights to contact medical professionals. A health department spokeswoman said that it was not yet known whether the man, 48, had infected anyone else on the flights with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
All of the flights were on Lufthansa. The airline said in a statement tonight that it had disinfected all of the airplanes and was contacting the air crews and passengers, and it contended that the likelihood of anyone becoming infected during the flights was ``very remote.''
Airlines have been saying that the filters aboard modern planes do a good job of removing viruses from the air. But according to the health department here, at least 13 people have fallen sick with SARS after they shared a flight from Hong Kong to Beijing last month with an elderly man who had become infected with the disease while visiting his brother in a hospital here.
Tonight's appeal for the Lufthansa air crews and passengers to come forward follows nearly a dozen such appeals by health officials and airlines operating flights in and out of Hong Kong. Travelers have continued to board planes while feeling ill despite strenuous warnings from the World Health Organization and national health agencies that they not do so.
In the case announced tonight, the man flew on Lufthansa flight 731 on March 30 from Hong Kong to Munich, and traveled on the following day on flight 4316 to Barcelona, according to an itinerary released here by the health department. The man then developed symptoms while in Barcelona.
The man then traveled on flight 4303 to Frankfurt on April 2 and on to London the same day on flight 4520. He went to Munich the next day on flight 4671, then headed for Frankfurt on April 4 on flight 265. He connected with flight 738 the same day back to Hong Kong, arriving on April 5.
The man checked into a hospital here on April 8 and was confirmed today to have SARS.
Doctors do not yet know how infectious, if at all, people are in the early stages of SARS. But Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong, Hong Kong's secretary for health, welfare and food, warned tonight that doctors here had become infected from people who had not yet shown the full symptoms identified by the World Health Organization.
Dr. Yeoh suggested that even someone with diarrhea alone could be infectious.
The sick man's nationality was uncertain tonight. The health department statement did not identify it at all, while the airline's statement described the man as Chinese.
An airline official said that the company had been told by the health department here only that the man was Chinese. The health department spokeswoman said that the man seemed to be of Chinese descent but that the agency had been unable to determine the man's nationality.
``He travels a lot,'' the spokeswoman said. ``We don't know his passport.''
Hong Kong still issues separate passports from mainland China, a legacy of its days as a former British colony. Officials here sometimes refer to people as Chinese if they are from Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province, or if they are people of any nationality who happen to be of Chinese descent.
The infected man's odyssey could not come at a worse time for Hong Kong, as countries have begun limiting the entry of people traveling from here or imposing quarantines on them.
Malaysia stopped issuing visas today to practically all holders of Hong Kong and mainland China passports. Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong's main airline, announced tonight that it had suspended all flights to Kuala Lumpur because there were very few passengers left.
Regina Ip, Hong Kong's secretary of security, met with Malaysia's consul general here today to protest the decision. ``There is no reason why the mobility of Hong Kong residents who do not have any close contact with infected persons should be restricted,'' she said afterward.
Today, Singapore also imposed a 10-day quarantine on all foreign workers earning less than $24,000 a year who have recently been in a SARS-affected country or territory. Employers must pay all costs of the quarantine. Singapore has been trying for years to lure high-income expatriates in financial services and other lucrative industries, while making it harder for lower-income workers to immigrate and do jobs that less-educated Singaporeans might otherwise do.
Hong Kong's economy depends heavily on its role as Asia's transportation hub, the place from which businesses can control and coordinate factories and other businesses spread across the continent. Hong Kong has the world's busiest container port for sea freight, the world's busiest airport for international air cargo shipments and what was, until recently, Asia's busiest airport in terms of international air passenger departures.
But the availability of flights here is withering as many governments have warned their citizens not to visit and many businesses have ordered their employees not to travel here.
Cathay Pacific has canceled a quarter of its daily flights here. Dragonair, an affiliated carrier that dominates the business of flying people from Hong Kong to cities in mainland China, has stopped operating almost half its flights. Continental Airlines canceled its daily, nonstop flight from Hong Kong to New York earlier this week for lack of passengers.
The Airport Authority here said that a third of all flights originally scheduled to operate today had been canceled for various reasons.
COLE is facing the BOTANIST who's using a pointer to indicate various fading photos and newspaper clippings tacked on the wall.
BOTANIST
" Let's consider again our current information -- if the symptoms were first detected in Philadelphia on June 28, 1995, that makes us know that...?"
COLE
"It was released in Philadelphia, probably on June 14, 1995."
BOTANIST
"And it appeared sequentially after that in...?"
With a quick glance at the panel of SCIENTISTS staring at him from behind the long table, COLE replies like a good pupil,
"San Francisco, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkok, then Peking."
BOTANIST
"Meaning...???"
COLE
"That the virus was taken from Philadelphia to San Francisco, then to New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Kinshasa, Karachi, Bangkok, then Peking."
BOTANIST
"And your only goal is...???"
COLE
"To find out where the virus is so a qualified scientist can travel back into the past and study the original virus."
BOTANIST
"So that...???"
COLE
"Uh, so that a vaccine can be developed that will, uh, allow mankind to reclaim the surface of the earth."
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