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GENEVA, March 27: The World Health Organisation on Thursday recommended that countries most affected by a new respiratory disease screen international passengers at airports, but stopped short of recommending outright travel restrictions.
“We are now at the stage where we are going to step up our recommendations with regard to travel,” a World Health Organisation (WHO) official told reporters, as the toll from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) climbed to more than 50, with some 1,300 others infected around the world.
“In particular, we are going to focus on reducing the likelihood of people who are infected with SARS undertaking international travel from the main affected areas,” said Max Hardiman, the international health regulations director for the Geneva-based UN health body.
Passengers checking in for flights should be asked if they have exhibited SARS-related symptoms like coughing, fever or breathing difficulties, and whether they have come in contact with possible SARS cases, he said.
If a passenger replies yes to one of the questions or if airport staff have any doubts, the passenger should be referred to a health care worker, Hardiman said.
“We are not recommending any restrictions to travel to any destinations,” Hardiman said.
WHO has recommended screening in Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guangdong province in China and Canada.
If an ill passenger on a flight is suspected of having SARS, he should be isolated, fitted with a mask and assessed on arrival at his destination, WHO has recommended in guidelines to aircraft crews.
HONG KONG: Hong Kong joined Singapore on Thursday in taking drastic steps to combat the spread of a new respiratory disease that has killed over 50 people and infected more than 1,300 others around the world.
The Hong Kong authorities announced Thursday that schools would be closed from Saturday until April 6 and a tough quarantine law would be invoked in a bid to halt the outbreak of atypical pneumonia, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which has sparked a global health alert.
SINGAPORE: Singapore has suspended all classes, a decision affecting 600,000 students, up to junior college level until April 6, and at least 861 people in the city-state have been confined at home on government orders.
VIRUS DISCOVERED: French researchers say they have uncovered the world’s largest known virus, a pneumonia-causing agent found in amoeba that lurk in air-conditioning systems, but stress it has no link with the respiratory epidemic that has broken out in Southeast Asia.
The virus is so big that it was at first mistaken for a bacterium and is visible through a good optical telescope, something that is usually impossible for viruses, they say.
It has been dubbed Mimivirus, shorthand for “Mimicking microbe”. So far, nearly 900 genes have been identified in its genome, an enormous figure for viruses.
“It is a potential agent for pneumonia,” one of the researchers, Didier Raoult of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), told AFP.
“Blood samples of people with pneumonia have revealed antibodies for this virus,” he said.
“However, Mimivirus has no connection at all with the new form of pneumonia which has recently appeared in Asia.”
The study is published on Thursday in the US scientific journal Science.
Amoeba are single-celled creatures called protozoa. They live in temperate waters and are predators, feeding on germs.—AFP
