Taiwan acts as virus scare grips
Sunday, 30 March, 2003
Many people are buying surgical masks
Taiwan is considering a temporary shutdown of its limited links with China to try to control the rapid spread of a new form of pneumonia.
Prime Minister Yu Shyi-kun said a decision on suspending contacts could be made by Monday.
The Taiwanese President, Chen Shui-bian, has blamed China - the suspected origin of the disease - of concealing the extent of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and so hastening its spread.
Taiwan has already decreed the syndrome an "infectious disease" subject to quarantine laws and has banned visits by civil servants to affected areas, including mainland China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control puts the number of local probable cases at 12, most of them reporting the illness following trips to mainland China and Hong Kong.
No deaths have been blamed on the infection in Taiwan so far.
But at least 200 more people have been placed on a "home confinement" list for two weeks by health authorities, bringing the total number of people on the list to 500.
Fears of further transmissions have now prompted Taiwan's proposal to cancel the limited semi-direct links with China.
Direct transport links were severed 1949 at the end of the civil war.
The World Health Organisation has warned of the seriousness of the outbreak.
As concern spreads, the WHO announced that the doctor who identified the bug has himself died of the disease.
Dr Carlo Urbani, a 46-year-old Italian and an expert on communicable diseases, had identified Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in an American businessman admitted to hospital in Vietnam in February.
The WHO said Dr Urbani's early detection of the disease had led to increased global surveillance, enabling the identification and subsequent isolation of patients.
At least 54 people are known to have died of the disease, and more than 1,500 people have been infected worldwide.
Hong Kong, which reported some of the first evidence of the disease, recorded 60 fresh cases of infection on Saturday.
The government has decided to close the city's schools for a week, while thousands of people are wearing surgical masks when they leave their houses.
Hong Kong's health secretary said more people would fall ill, despite the fact that more than 1,000 people had already been quarantined.
Secretive
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are all confining people to their homes if they have been exposed to the disease.
Isolated cases have been identified in Europe and North America.
However in China, where the outbreak has killed at least 30 people, the authorities are enforcing a media blackout, apparently concerned that news of the disease will cause panic.
Chinese authorities have come under widespread criticism for their secretive handling of the infection.
They have continued to stall on granting permission for a group of WHO doctors to visit the south of the country, where China's first cases of the virus appeared.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2900419.stm