SARS Keeps Chinese Home as Canada Lures Visitors
China cut its "golden week" holiday to a long weekend this year and issued stern travel advisories to discourage people from heading home to the hinterland.
Last year, 87.1 million people thronged trains, buses and planes during the weeklong holiday, generating $4 billion in revenues, state media said.
The World Health Organization confirmed that China was by far the country worst hit by severe acute respiratory syndrome. "China now accounts for more probable cases than the rest of the world combined," WHO said in a statement.
SARS has killed 170 people in China and infected more than 3,600 since it emerged in the southern province of Guangdong late last year. Globally, it has infected more than 6,100 people in at least 25 countries, killing close to 400.
Beijing has been one of the worst hit areas and is seeing 100 or more new cases every day. The capital has already closed schools and cinemas and put 11,000 people under quarantine.
The empty buses and mounting business closures reinforced what most people already know: China has yet to control the the virus.
Chinese health officials are trying to equip more hospitals to handle SARS cases, but who said they lacked equipment including masks, gloves, ventilators and ambulances to transport patients between hospitals. *** Isolation Key****
Doctors say immediately isolating SARS patients is key to preventing its spread and quick treatment may help patients survive. Symptoms include high fever, cough and pneumonia, and there is no standard treatment. SARS is mainly passed by droplets through sneezing and coughing.
Scientific evidence about the virus trickled out but for the most part painted only a sketchy picture.
Doctors in Hong Kong say they had discovered traces of the virus in the stools and urine of patients thought to be free of SARS and discharged from hospitals.
They also found evidence of permanent lung scarring and possible cases of relapses in patients who had been infected.
"Recovered patients have the virus in their stools and urine," David Hui, a doctor treating SARS patients, told Reuters.
Hong Kong's director of health told a news conference experts were now trying to ascertain how long recovered patients in the territory may be passing the virus in their stools and urine and whether they can infect others.
Scientists who have sequenced all the genetic material of the SARS virus said they were still stumped by the previously unknown microbe.
They said it had yielded virtually no clues about where it came from or why it infects and sometimes kills people. And because there is nothing similar to compare it with, it will take some time to tease out its secrets.
But having the genome sequenced and published will help researchers speed out better diagnostic tests for SARS and design drugs or vaccines to fight it, the international team of researchers said.
"The fact that it is so different from other viruses has made it difficult," Mark Pallansch of the U.S. centers for disease control and prevention told reporters. *** Luring Tourists***
In Canada, the scramble was on to attract visitors put off by the SARS outbreak there and by WHO's brief advisory to travelers to avoid Toronto.
But the Toronto area reported two more SARS cases, both in nurses. "For us, this is a setback," Dr. Donald Low, chief of microbiology at Mount Sinai Hospital, told Reuters. Canada has had 349 probable or suspected cases of SARS and 23 deaths.
But businesses and government joined forces to offer tax breaks, low-cost flights, cut-rate hotels and discounted theater shows.
Air Canada and Jetsgo Airlines are offering cheap air fares to Toronto and other Canadian cities.
In one unexplained development, who said India was SARS-free, although the government there had identified 20 cases and even quarantined an entire wedding party. "India has no cases that fit the definition of SARS," Dr. S.J. Habayeb, WHO's representative to India, told a news conference. "So far there have been no cases."