HONG KONG, April 18: China’s new president on Friday ordered health officials to stop covering up the SARS epidemic, as US authorities said a first test for the killer pneumonia could be ready in days.
Mr Hu Jintao’s intervention came during an emergency Communist Party meeting following criticism around the world of China’s handling of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), state media said.
He warned that the battle against SARS, which has killed at least 166 people and infected over 3,200 in some 30 countries, would be long and difficult.
Hu told government departments to “accurately report on the epidemic ... and keep the public informed,” the English-language China Daily reported.
The meeting of China’s elite nine-member Politburo Standing Committee “explicitly warned against the covering up of SARS cases and demanded the accurate, timely and honest reporting of the SARS situation”.
The report was carried on the front page of all major Chinese newspapers, which have until now been enforcing a selective news blackout on SARS.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that in Beijing alone the number of SARS cases may be five times higher than reported, indicating China’s official toll of 66 deaths and 1,461 cases may only be the tip of the iceberg.
The mystery virus — for which there is no cure, vaccine or diagnostic test — first emerged in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong in November, but authorities failed to notify the WHO until March.
By then a sick Chinese doctor had carried the virus into neighbouring Hong Kong, setting off an epidemic in the territory that has since killed 66 people and triggered a global health crisis as SARS was carried around the world by airline passengers.
The vast majority of SARS cases are in Asia. In addition to China and Hong Kong, deaths have also been recorded in Canada (13), Singapore (13), Vietnam (five), Thailand (two) and Malaysia (one).
The worst affected country outside Asia is Canada, which reported three new cases on Thursday to bring the total to 306. India confirmed a first case and South Korea reported two more suspect cases, raising its total to six.
Scientists are battling to understand the new disease. The WHO this week pinpointed the coronavirus — a virus family which causes the common cold — as the cause of SARS.
The next step is to develop a diagnostic kit for the illness — which begins with fever, a cough and shortness of breath — and ultimately a cure.
TESTS: US Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson told journalists in Rome on Thursday that three tests developed by scientists at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention were currently undergoing an approval process.
“That approval process is ongoing and should be done, hopefully, in a week to 10 days,” Thompson said.
The Genome Institute of Singapore also said this week they hoped to produce a testing kit within days.
In a worrying development, the Hong Kong authorities confirmed on Thursday that a second transmission route for the disease existed.
Initially it was believed the virus was only spread by droplets emitted by somebody coughing or sneezing, but an investigation into an outbreak at the Amoy Gardens housing estate found it was spread through the sewage system.
A sick man with diarrhoea managed to infect more than 300 people as the virus was carried through the housing block’s leaky sewage system.
The epidemic has caused huge disruption and economic losses across Asia since the WHO posted a global alert about the illness five weeks ago. In particular travel and tourism have slumped.
The UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) regional survey for 2003 estimated the SARS virus would shave 0.4 percentage points off Asia’s economic growth rate for the year.
In the latest indication of the economic impact of the epidemic, China’s largest trade fair in the city of Guangzhou revealed Friday it had attracted around 7,600 representatives so far compared with over 135,000 last year.
In a bid to contain the economic fall-out and implement regionwide measures to contain the virus, 10 Southeast Asian nations said they would hold a one-day summit in Bangkok on April 29.—AFP
