[Mother Abigail]

A team from the World Health Organization arrived in Beijing on Sunday to determine whether the outbreak in Guangdong was related to the disease that had spread from Hong Kong.

Although listed among the 15 countries reporting cases of the disease to the World Health Organization, China is the only government not to give any information on how many people have been infected or killed by the outbreak.

The reluctance of the Chinese government to make public information fueled panic in Guangdong as people snapped up supplies of traditional medicines, antibiotics and vinegar for use as a disinfectant.

The disease prompted the World Health Organization to raise a ''global alert'' for the first time in a decade due to the speed, severity and highly infectious nature of the disease.

Yeoh described spending time with William Ho, chief executive of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, just hours before he checked into the hospital suffering severe pneumonia.

''The disease was very, very quick,'' Yeoh said. ''We both attended a function on Saturday, but by Sunday night he had a high a fever, chills and had to be hospitalized.''

[malakhi]

Hmmm... Does China really have any incentive to curb the spread of this disease? Talk about your natural population control.