May 6, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 3, 1424

HONG KONG, May 5: China on Monday quarantined 10,000 more citizens in its desperate efforts to contain SARS as panic riots hit rural areas despite global successes in halting the spread of the virus.

Nine new deaths from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and 160 new cases were reported in China on Monday, bringing the death toll to 206 and the total cases to 4,280 in what remains the worst-affected country.

Hong Kong reported three more fatalities, the lowest single-day death toll since April 12, fuelling optimism that the outbreak may have peaked in the territory. The total deaths from the disease in Hong Kong now stand at 187.

Canada, meanwhile, reported just one new “probable” case of SARS on Sunday, bringing further hope that the outbreak in the country has been brought under control.

A World Health Organization (WHO) advisory against non-essential travel to the Canadian city of Toronto was lifted last week but WHO advisories on travel to Hong Kong, Beijing and China’s Guangdong and Shanxi provinces remain.

“We are pleased the daily SARS cases continued to drop to the single digits,” Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa said, adding he hoped talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) would also lift the region’s travel ban.

In the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, 10,000 people were quarantined in an effort to halt the spread of SARS, while villagers in two remote areas destroyed quarantine centres and beat up officials, a sign the disease was creating social instability across the country.

“Several people have been detained as a result of the incident,” a police official in Yuhuan county in eastern Zhejiang province told AFP.

In another incident, villagers rioted from April 25 to 28 in Linzhou city, central Henan province, ransacking a planned SARS quarantine center and other medical facilities, Zhou Dawei, a local Linzhou official told AFP.

The Linzhou riot resulted in the May 2 sacking of the director of the city’s health bureau Wang Songlin and the city’s infectious diseases station head Wang Yuxi, Zhou said.

In Beijing however, confidence in official government reports that SARS was being brought under control prompted many people to “prematurely” lower their guards against the virus, taking to once deserted streets.

The WHO’s Beijing-based spokeswoman Mangai Balasegaram warned there was no room for complacency.

“There’s a lot more analysis that needs to be done, and we think it’s premature to make that kind of assessment,” she said.—AFP