Posted on 04/21/2003 5:55:20 PM PDT by InShanghai
21 April 2003
China sacked its Health Minister and the mayor of Beijing yesterday and cancelled a week-long May Day holiday after suddenly increasing the figure for Sars cases in the capital.
Beijing has more than 700 confirmed and unconfirmed cases, ten times more than initially admitted, putting it among the communities hit hardest in the world, behind only Guangdong province and Hong Kong. Even now there are doubts whether all the figures in China have been revealed.
The government's actions come after an emergency politburo meeting on Thursday ended weeks of lies and evasions by top officials who tried to deceive World Health Organisations experts struggling to control the outbreak.
In the meantime, the sense of panic amid the Chinese population has spiralled. Public opinion surveys conducted secretly by the government have revealed a rising tide of anger. People have stopped flying on planes and public meeting places are deserted. School and university classes have been suspended. In Beijing all the main international hotels are almost empty, while most people are wearing double face masks and disinfecting their homes and offices. People have been told to eat garlic and a turnip-type vegetable as an antidote. Foreign visits have been cancelled or postponed including that of Tony Blair who was scheduled to arrive this week.
Shopkeepers are using surgical gloves and railway staff are disinfecting stations and giving passengers random temperature checks.
The growing unease was also evident in Canada, the country affected worst outside Asia, where a 14th person has died. Fears that Toronto's health system is now infected saw a leading hospital close its critical care unit after four staff members began showing symptoms.
Meanwhile, Singapore, the country with the fourth-biggest toll, shut its wholesale vegetable market and quarantined all 2,400 workers. South Korea said it was considering a ban on some blood donations. Indonesia deployed troops to help medical staff to examine returning workers and normally bustling Hong Kong was like a ghost town .
China's admission that things were far worse came from Gao Qiang, the deputy health minister, who said an investigation ordered by leaders on 15 April had revealed 339 infections, 18 deaths and 402 suspected cases in Beijing – vastly higher than the 37 cases and four deaths reported earlier. Such public sackings and public admissions of failure are extremely rare in Chinese politics where the principle of collective responsibility is normally applied "Someone had to be held accountable," said a Chinese government source.
Mr Gao denied that his ministry had deliberately misrepresented the facts.
"There is an essential difference between inaccuracy of Sars statistics and intentional cover-up of the situation of the disease," he said. China, he explained, had simply used a different system to report cases. Zhang Winking, the Health Minister, and Ming Xenon, the Beijing deputy party secretary, had repeatedly issued statements saying the position was under control and that China was safe to visit. The Health Minister said the disease was "under effective control".
On the contrary, the disease spread rapidly in the capital but to cover it up the authorities moved patients into military hospitals and did their utmost to deny access to investigators. When they did arrive, the patients were moved out of their rooms and driven around the city.
The World Heath Organisation was alerted to the crisis at China's largest transportation hub only by the courage of a military doctor, Jiang Yanyong, 71, who took the bold step of publicly revealing the number of cases he was aware of in the military hospitals.
WHO said on Wednesday there were probably as many as 200 people in Beijing infected with Sars, although the city government was then insisting that there were only 37 cases.
At least eight of China's poorer provinces, including Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia, have reported Sars cases. Officials said hospitals in those areas may not be able to cope with contagion and the influx of patients.
The handling of the crisis has dealt China's reputation a severe blow. While the top leadership is primarily concerned at the impact on foreign invest-ment and economic growth, some observers hope it may have wider consequences. Some speculate it could be used by the incoming leadership to push for glasnost in the same way President Mikhail Gorbachev exploited the Chernobyl nuclear accident to push through changes in the former Soviet Union.
Until now, political reforms have not been on the agenda of President Hu who said in a public appearance at military research institute in Beijing yesterday he was confident of China's ability to find the methods to combat Sars.
If this ruins the economies of Asia, war will be next.Yeah. Because sick people crave combat. The black death prompted the bloodiest war ever on the European penninsula. We just don't know about it because everyone that participated died.
Hmmmm.....
Is that right? Or is it higher?
How so?
Thanks for the laugh.
22 April 2003
China is on the brink of a Sars epidemic and it might not be able to cope, health experts warned yesterday.
The World Health Organisation said that the illness was now reaching the Chinese countryside, where 70 per cent of the 1.3 billion population live.
The warning came as the illness spread to the Philippines. Economists said that the virus, which has killed 218 people and infected 3,900 worldwide, would cause more damage to the Asian economy than the war in Iraq.
In China, the WHO said, medical facilities in the provinces were poor and an epidemic would have disastrous consequences. Henk Bekedam, the WHO'S representative in Beijing, said: "I think we're going to have a very big outbreak in China. I think it will be quite a challenge to contain Sars within China, especially those provinces that have very limited resources."
The Chinese government, which last weekend sacked two senior officials and admitted having 10 times more Sars cases than originally thought, said that since Friday the virus had killed 13 people and infected a further 194, including 130 since Sunday.
The figures, contained in the first daily bulletin from the health ministry, brought the death toll in China to 92 and total cases to 2,001 – more than half the global total. Officials said the illness had spread to at least 10 of China's 31 provinces.
The WHO warnings were backed by Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, who said the health system in the countryside meant an epidemic would take hold "before we know it" and that the "consequences could be too dreadful to contemplate".
The Chinese government said it was setting aside £100m to deal with the outbreak.
The Philippines became the 26th country to fall victim to the virus; a spokesman said a Canadian nurse on holiday appeared to have been infected.
Health officials in Canada, which has suffered the largest outbreak outside Asia with a death toll of 14, said they were concerned that passengers on two trains in Toronto may have been exposed to the disease.
A nurse subsequently diagnosed with Sars had travelled at least twice on the city's metro system last week, Dr Barbara Yaffe, the city's medical officer, said.
In Britain, the Department of Health denied reports that it had earmarked an unnamed hospital to house all infected patients in the event of an epidemic. A spokeswoman said: "The NHS has contagious disease units across the country to deal with any such problem."
Officials in Hong Kong said a further six people had succumbed, bringing the number of fatalities to 94, the highest death toll in the world.
In Singapore, where there have been 190 cases and 14 deaths, food stalls ran out of supplies and the price of some vegetables doubled after the country's largest wholesale vegetable market was closed when three workers fell ill.
Financial analysts have downgraded growth forecasts across South-east Asia with the exception of Japan, saying that the drop in spending, tourism and business travel would depress growth more than the Iraq war.
The Association of British Travel Agents said last night that none of its members was currently offering holidays to Hong Kong, which was visited by 308,000 Britons last year. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have both reduced their services to the destination.
There are some Freepers who have found an interest in SARS, we are trying to follow it and learn as much about it as we can. This is not a "sky-falling" forum.
You don't have to endure any of them: It's called self-control. If you don't want to read the threads then ignore them. Same as I do whenever someone posts a Jacko thread.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.