Posted on 04/23/2003 1:43:35 PM PDT by Prince Charles
Beijing Posts Surge in SARS Cases as Infection Fears Mount
By ERIK ECKHOLM The New York Times
BEIJING, April 23 Reported cases of a new respiratory disease in Beijing surged by 105 new cases today, bringing the total to 693, as the threat of deadly infection suddenly became the main topic of conversation in this metropolis of 14 million.
Migrant workers and college students lined up warily at railroad stations for tickets to their native provinces while thousands of residents, on rumors of possibly draconian quarantines, thronged to grocery stores to stock up on rice and noodles.
Health experts warned that hundreds more cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome appeared inevitable as the government belatedly struggles to contain an epidemic it had tried to conceal until several days ago.
"Beijing lost the entire month of March in the fight against SARS (news - web sites), and now this is the consequence," said Henk Bekedam, chief of the World Health Organization (news - web sites) office here.
"Now they are working very hard on disease control," he said in an interview. "But the disease is more widespread here than we expected, and it's not clear if the end is in sight."
The W.H.O. headquarters in Geneva today added Beijing, along with China's Shanxi Province and Toronto Canada, to its list of places where nonessential travel should be avoided. Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in southeast China, where the disease first erupted, had previously been named.
[Canada is the only country outside of Asia where people have died from the disease. According to health officials, there have been 15 deaths in Canada from SARS and there are now 324 probable or suspected cases, most of them in Toronto.
[The Associated Press reported today that Major League Baseball plans to recommend that teams take precautions against the disease when they play in Toronto. The 10 teams that are scheduled to play in Toronto through the All-Star break in mid-July will be advised against signing autographs, visiting hospitals, using public transportation and mingling with large crowds, Rich Levin, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, told the news agency.]
In one of its most visible countermeasures yet in Beijing, the city today shut down all primary and secondary schools for at least the next two weeks, a step that may have been prudent but which only added to anxiety among a mistrustful public.
Only a week ago, a World Health Organization team caused concern by suggesting that cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in the city may have reached 200, rather than the few dozen officially reported at the time.
Alarm mounted on Saturday when health officials, pledging a new honesty, reported 339 confirmed cases in the capital. The national health minister and the mayor of Beijing were fired in a show of top-level resolve.
Now, just four days later, the reported total has climbed to 693 and health experts here say this reflects not only the transfer of previously "suspected" patients into the "confirmed" category, but also a significant rise in new cases of the disease. SARS has been fatal in 4 percent to 5 percent of cases.
The tally of new suspected is still climbing along with the confirmed cases, Mr. Bekedam said an indication that actual new cases are significantly climbing. On Monday, the health ministry said Beijing had more than 600 suspected cases, but it has not provided such figures for the last two days, adding to the uncertainty.
Mr. Bekedam would not speculate on the ultimate toll, but some health experts predicted that hundreds more cases, at least, would almost certainly appear in the city before new cases could taper off. That would still leave the disease a small actual presence in this vast city, but the psychological impact is already huge.
Mr. Bekedam stressed that it was essential for officials to provide more detailed information about which groups are contracting the virus and exactly where in the city. Such information can help to focus control measures, help the public reduce risks and prevent generalized panic.
Over all, China had 2,305 confirmed cases of the dangerous new viral disease as of Tuesday evening, the health ministry reported today, an increase of 147 over the total reported one day earlier. Ninety-six patients have died.
SARS was first detected late last year in Guangdong Province, which still accounts for the bulk of the country's listed cases.
But SARS has now been reported from many interior provinces, raising the specter of a much wider epidemic, even harder to tame. International experts question the credibility of persistently low totals reported from several poorer regions that have clusters of known SARS cases and scanty, substandard health services to halt the spread of the virus.
A World Health Organization team is now investigating conditions in the giant city of Shanghai. Only two cases there have been officially reported, but more appear to have been overlooked or concealed, some experts charge.
The steps toward greater openness about SARS in Beijing have not assuaged public fears, and many people continue to suspect the government's pronouncements.
Today, after rumors spread that commerce into the city might be stopped or that neighborhoods where cases were detected might be quarantined, shoppers raced to grocery stores, stocking up on rice, instant noodles and vegetables. State television tonight tried to reassure people that the stores were well stocked and would remain so.
Thousands of provincial businessmen, migrant workers and college students, most of them wearing protective masks, crowded railway stations and rushed onto buses today, feeling they would be safer elsewhere and ignoring official appeals for people to avoid travel that could expose them to the virus and disseminate it around the country.
The mood was tense at Beijing's central train station. Nearly everyone out front, including the policemen, wore a face mask. Small groups of travelers huddled in the plaza outside, trying to avoid spending time in crowded waiting rooms, and ticket lines were long.
Song Yang, a first-year student at the Nationalities University, was heading home to Jilin province. "We have no class for the next month, and Beijing is dangerous right now," he said.
A construction worker named Li was headed back to Jiangxi province with his co-workers, all of them still in work uniforms. "I've been in Beijing for four years now, but I need to go home and wait for this to blow over," he said.
This morning, city officials announced that all the city's primary and secondary schools would be closed for at least two weeks. They said that the 1.7 million affected students should study at home, using a newly improvised on-line educational service.
There have been no public reports of children dying from SARS, but fearful parents in many parts of the city had already kept their children home on Monday.
City officials said that the entrance exams for junior and senior high school may have to be postponed, which could cause major disruptions for families and schools in the months ahead.
The city education department said it was opening an "Educational Committee Online School" to help students study at home. (The Web address is www.bjedu.gov.cn.) But many schoolchildren do not have computers at home, instead visiting crowded Internet bars where they are more apt to play on-line games than to download math problems.
Citing the effects of the SARS epidemic on tourism and business in China, international financial analysts now predict that China's economy will stall or contract in the second quarter of 2003, hampering growth throughout East Asia.
Forecasts by Citicorp and J.P. Morgan both predict negative growth in the April-to June period, in part because of the costs related to SARS. But China's economy grew swiftly in the first quarter, and these companies and others still predict healthy net growth for the year as a whole.
Indeed.
More BIG jumps in SARS cases are long over due. By next week the 27 cases that Beijing admitted to just last week will skyrocket up to about 800. Then people will really begin to panic.
Perhaps Americans and Europeans in Beijing are more isolated culturally to begin with and thus may be a little safer.
I would flee too. But this could help spread it around the country.
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