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HONG KONG, April 1: A hoax report about the killer virus sweeping Hong Kong sparked panic food buying and hit financial markets on Tuesday, and the government said it was placing more than 200 people into isolation camps.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, reported its first three suspected cases. One official said one of the patients had died but this could not be confirmed.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has now affected almost 1,900 people in at least a dozen countries, and 63 are known to have died.
Singapore, which ranks third worldwide in the number of its SARS cases after Hong Kong and China, said three more people had been struck as nurses screening arriving air passengers found seven sick enough to send to hospital.
In Hong Kong, where 685 people have been infected and 16 have died from the virus, the Web site hoax forced authorities to deny it would isolate the entire territory.
“We have no plan to declare Hong Kong an infected area. We have adequate supplies to provide the needs of Hong Kong citizens and there is no need for any panic run on food,” Director of Health Margaret Chan told reporters.
The scare just added to the sense of dismay in the territory adjoining China’s Guangdong Province, where the virus is believed to have originated four months ago.
PLAGUED ESTATE: As some supermarkets found frightened customers panic buying canned and preserved foods, Hong Kong medical teams hunted for the reason why 237 people in one residential complex in urban Kowloon had fallen ill with SARS. The housing estate is home to about a third of all infections in Hong Kong.
More than half of the patients in the complex came from a single block. Late on Tuesday, the government was evacuating more than 200 residents remaining in the Amoy Gardens block, who were under official quarantine since Monday, to special isolation camps.
Protected by white surgical coats, caps, masks and gloves, officials sent the residents on coaches.
“Of the residents (in the block), we suspect that all have been in contact with the virus and it is highly likely that the vast majority have been infected,” Hong Kong Health Secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong told a news conference late on Tuesday. He said authorities would be offering the quarantined residents the option to receive medication.
Yeoh said the evacuation was necessary to facilitate a thorough investigation of the building facilities and to protect the residents and the public. He added that faeces, urine and secretions like tears could carry the virus.
Finding the cause of the Amoy outbreak is critical because it could prove or disprove a theory that the virus has mutated into an airborne plague, which could infect many more people much more quickly. Hong Kong found 75 new SARS cases on Tuesday.
So far, doctors have believed the virus spreads only when people get into contact with droplets or secretions from infected patients, emitted when they cough, spit and sneeze, for example.
Yeoh said preliminary evidence showed the virus was spread in the block through droplets, bodily secretions and environmental pollution, and there was so far no evidence of airborne spread.
HOAX
The hoaxer had copied the format of the public Internet portal of the Mingpao, one of Hong Kong’s leading newspapers, and posted a message saying that the government would declare the city of seven million “an infected place”.
The daily said it had identified the teenager responsible for the hoax. Police said late on Tuesday they had arrested a 14-year-old boy in connection with the case.
As the rumour spread, the Hong Kong dollar took a slight knock, and stocks fell for another day as investors calculated the loss to the tourism, airlines, property and retail sectors.—Reuters
