0
HONG KONG, March 30: Hong Kong reported a sharp rise in pneumonia virus cases on Sunday, more than half of them in a single apartment building, as Thailand and Singapore stepped up curbs on air travellers.
Singapore’s health ministry said from Monday, nurses will be mobilised to meet all incoming flights from affected areas, to check ill passengers.
“Based on the latest information, this disease is more infectious than we thought,” Singapore’s Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang told reporters.
Hong Kong Health Secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong told local television on Sunday that infections leapt by 60 to 530 in the crowded city and that one more person had died of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), taking the toll to 13.
“The numbers will go up for one or two weeks,” the minister added, a prediction that will fuel the fears of the city’s seven million residents as officials try to rein in a disease that has killed 58 people across the world and infected 1,612.
Scores of cases from one Hong Kong apartment block have raised fears the virus could be airborne rather than spread by droplets from sneezing or coughing as previously thought.
At Amoy Gardens in urban Kowloon, the number of residents infected has soared from seven mid-week to 121 on Sunday, baffling health officials.
Panic-stricken residents, wearing face masks and gloves, moved out of the estate, and shops and restaurants were deserted or shut.
“I’m scared. I’m taking my temperature every day,” said one woman resident. “I stayed at home for several days. It’s terrifying. I think I’ll get it sooner or later.”
The government urged the territory’s families to clean their homes on Sunday in a bid to contain the spread of SARS. Authorities were disinfecting public parks. Taxi drivers were cleaning their vehicles. Schools were already closed.
HUNT FOR PASSENGERS: Health officials say the virus, identified by Hong Kong scientists as belonging to a family of viruses that cause colds, first surfaced in southern China in November and has since been spread by air travellers around the world.
Worst hit have been China, with 34 dead and more than 800 infected, and Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Taiwan and Thailand. North America and Europe have also reported infections.
Hong Kong authorities said they were urgently tracing 222 passengers and 15 crew members on last Wednesday’s Dragonair flight KA-901 from Beijing after one passenger was found to have caught the disease and was now in hospital.
Thailand said on Sunday it would quarantine for at least 24 hours any incoming travellers suspected to be infected, and issued another travel warning urging Thais to avoid visiting China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam.
Singapore’s Civil Aviation Authority ordered all airlines operating at Changi international airport to ask passengers questions recommended by the World Health Organisation before allowing them to board flights to the city state.—Reuters
