HONG KONG, March 18: Hong Kong moved to curb the spread of potentially deadly atypical pneumonia on Tuesday by closing an accident and emergency ward, as the number of cases here grew to 111.

Accident and emergency services will be closed for at least three days at the Prince of Wales hospital, where medical ward staff have also been cut by a third, hospital authority chief executive Dr William Ho told a press conference.

Thirty-nine workers at the hospital are among 111 people in Hong Kong stricken by the mysterious pneumonia, up from 83 announced on Monday. A further 12 people were under observation.

Health Secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong sought to play down the seriousness of the outbreak, saying the mystery disease did not appear to be widespread in the community at large.

“Of course, if we don’t know the virus, we would not begin to discern the number in the community,” he admitted. “But we have certainly not seen widespread outbreaks in the community, because if they were as widespread as in the hospitals, you can imagine that we’d have large numbers of atypical pneumonia in the hospitals.”

Hong Kong is at the centre of global alert over the mystery disease, which has been given the name Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) by the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO).

At least four deaths — two in Canada, one in Hong Kong and one in Vietnam — have been attributed to the disease, which has been described as an atypical pneumonia or influenza-like illness.

Besides the four confirmed deaths, health officials also strongly suspect SARS was behind five deaths last month in China’s southern Guangdong province, where the disease may have originated.

A total of 305 people were infected in Guangdong while there have been more than 200 confirmed or suspected cases of SARS in the latest outbreak, according to a toll compiled by AFP from WHO figures and local sources.

Hong Kong health authorities have set up a telephone hotline to advise members of the public what action should be taken in to prevent respiratory tract infection, a spokesman for the Health Department said.

Among the advice given included those who need to take care for the sick family members with respiratory tract infection by putting on masks to reduce the chance of acquiring infection through the airways.

“We are closely monitoring the situation” a spokeswoman for the Hospital Authority said. “We don’t see a surge of cases in pneumonia, which is a common disease in Hong Kong at this time of the year,” she said.

“We have an average of 1,000 cases each month,” the spokeswoman added.

First case in Europe: A Singaporean in medical isolation in Germany was confirmed on Tuesday as suffering a potentially deadly respiratory disease that has already surfaced in Asia and Canada, doctors said Tuesday.

“We are sure it is SARS,” said Hans Reinhard-Brodt, head of the isolation ward at the Frankfurt University clinic where the man is being treated.

SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, is a mysterious infection that has so far killed four people in Asia and Canada, prompting a global alert by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The condition of the 32-year-old Singaporean doctor, who had earlier treated a patient with the malady, is reported to be improving and out of danger. His fever has gone, Brodt said.

His pregnant wife, 30, and his 62-year-old mother-in-law who were travelling with him have also shown signs of the illness.

All three were placed in medical isolation in the western German city of Frankfurt after flying in on a Singapore-bound flight from New York.

The 150-odd passengers on board the same flight were sent home and told not to leave until doctors gave them the all-clear in case they too began to show signs.

Meanwhile, three similar feared cases of the illness, in an American couple in the eastern city of Leipzig and a man who returned to Berlin from Shanghai, turned out to be unrelated.

Frankfurt airport, the biggest in mainland Europe, is urging travellers from Asia to report any symptoms such as fevers or headaches.

Five people died of an illness with similar symptoms that peaked in China’s southern Guangdong province in mid-February.—AFP