Posted on 04/21/2003 1:12:36 AM PDT by flamefront
Beijing - China's drastic measures designed to curb Sars have likely come too late to prevent the epidemic from threatening virtually all the country's 1.3 billion people, according to analysts.
A decision to cancel the week-long May Day holidays to keep people from travelling will also have little effect since the virus has probably already spread to all corners of the continent-sized country, they said.
"It's too late, they can't put the genie back in the bottle," said Andrew Thompson, an expert on Chinese health issues at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"It's got to be everywhere by now, and if it isn't, it will soon be there," he said.
So far, 14 of China's 31 municipalities and provinces have reported Sars cases.
Lack of clarity
The most chilling aspect for many in China is the lack of clarity about the extent of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The government has reported more than 1 800 confirmed cases nationwide, and at least 80 deaths, but few believe the statistics are complete.
Even Beijing seems to lack faith in the data it gets from the provinces, dispatching special investigative teams to detect under-reporting or cover-ups.
In the provinces, too, doctors only have partial ideas about what is going on in their immediate neighbourhood.
In Qingxu County, a part of north China particularly badly hit with up to five Sars deaths, doctors at the People's Hospital have not had contact with their patients for days.
"People are scared to come here because of the Sars cases we've had," said a female doctor surnamed You. "So they go to small rural clinics instead."
Showing the potential damage Sars can wreak, tuberculosis which spreads in much the same way, has infected 4.5 million people in China, according to official statistics.
Rapid spread
The rapid spread of Sars has only been possible because China now, after 20 years of reform, is a freer society than anytime previously in history.
Chinese travel longer and more frequently than ever before, ensuring that new strands of virus inevitably get a free ride to all habitable parts of the country.
The biggest contribution to the spread of novel diseases is made by China's 94 million migrant workers who hail from the countryside and seek work in places like Beijing and Guangzhou.
When they return home for major holidays - like the just-cancelled May Day vacation - they introduce not only new big-city fashions and habits, but occasionally also previously unknown diseases.
The result, as Sars reaches rural China this way, is likely to be disastrous, by the health ministry's own admission.
Grim picture
"Rural medical facilities are relatively weak, and the awareness among farmers of self-protection is generally not as high as in the cities," Vice Health Minister Gao Qian said at a briefing on Sunday.
"So once the disaster spreads to these areas, the consequences will be especially grim," he said.
Illustrating the problems of the countryside, more than 60 percent of rural tuberculosis patients leave hospital before fully recovering because they cannot afford to pay for treatment.
The danger of a significantly higher death toll will come if or when Sars starts affecting parts of China already struggling with other widespread and lethal diseases, according to experts.
Tuberculosis patients are more drug-resistant, meaning that it will be much harder to cure them of Sars.
And impoverished Henan province, where two Sars cases have now been reported, is also the home of thousands of rural dwellers who had their immune defences weakened by HIV.
"As it spreads in Henan, it will get much, much worse," said Thompson. "The mortality rate will rise to much more than four percent."
April 21 2003 at 01:57PM
By Jason Szep
Singapore - Singaporeans faced a shortage of fresh vegetables on Monday after a SARS outbreak forced health authorities to shut the nation's biggest wholesale vegetable market and quarantine all of its 2 400 workers.
Stocks at food stalls ran low and prices of some popular vegetables had doubled two days after the government announced a 10-day closure of the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market, the source of 70 percent of Singapore's vegetables.
The 24-hour market was shut late on Saturday after three workers there contracted the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus, posing the first real challenge to the government's strategy of confining SARS to hospitals.
'I would say 80 percent of my suppliers have been affected' "I would say 80 percent of my suppliers have been affected," said Goh Loon, a 42-year-old food seller at a stall run by his family for more than 30 years in Singapore's Holland Village.
"There's nowhere to get supply. I have never seen anything like this," said Goh, pointing to nearly empty boxes of bean sprouts and eggplants at his stall.
Singaporeans eat about 1 000 tons of vegetables a day, with about 30 percent bought in supermarkets and the rest at Pasir Panjang, which supplies hundreds of small, family-run food stalls such as Goh's in densely packed neighbourhood food markets.
Shutting down Pasir Panjang is part of an aggressive strategy by Singapore authorities to "isolate and contain" SARS following 178 confirmed cases in the city-state, the world's fourth highest number, and 14 deaths including one worker from Pasir Panjang.
The government said it was working with supermarkets to replenish stocks by increasing direct imports from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, but concedes that Singapore faces a "significant disruption of vegetable supply" until April 29.
State-run grocer NTUC FairPrice, which directly imports 90 percent of its vegetables and fruit, said it was confident it had enough stocks to meet demand over the next few days and had tripled its orders for leafy vegetables.
Shops have reported scenes of panic buying, including cabbages bought in multiple basketloads and runs on popular vegetables such as "chai sin" and "gai lan" used in stir fry dishes.
Goh said some of the prices at his stall had doubled, and media reports said "chai sin" sold at SIN$3 (about R14) a kg in some stalls compared with the usual SIN$2,50.
Minister of Health Lim Hng Kiang urged retailers to avoid price mark ups, and NTUC FairPrice said its prices would remain stable during the 10-day shutdown of Pasir Panjang.
Lim also said residents had an excuse for the next 10 days to "skip their greens".
"You can make up for it after the 10 days," he told a news conference late on Sunday.
Pasir Panjang's closure also affects farmers in neighbouring Malaysia, who supply 45 percent of all Singapore's imported vegetables - most of it destined for Pasir Panjang on flatbed trucks driven over a narrow causeway between the countries.
Authorities also said Malaysian vegetable-truck drivers who had recently made runs to Pasir Panjang would not be allowed back into Singapore for 10 days.
Malaysian drivers bound for Singapore's supermarkets must have their temperature taken and fill in declarations saying they did not go to Pasir Panjang between April 5 and April 19.
See the recent SARS posts on FreeRepublic.
Especially consider this one: SARS virus proves dangerously durable.
In Canada they are worried because Nurse may have spread SARS virus just by commuting on a train after working with SARS patients.
Your friend should take precautions.
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