Asia clamps down as deadly SARS spreads, toll hits 110

Asia clamps down as deadly SARS spreads, toll hits 110

Tan Ee Lyn and Jason Szep, Reuters, Hong Kong/Singapore

Singapore slapped a quarantine on arriving foreign workers as anxiety grew on Thursday over the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus.

Hong Kong reported three more deaths and officials feared the illness could spread further through the city's crowded and grimy tower blocks.

Singapore is trying to pin down the source of an outbreak in the city's biggest hospital after reporting the largest jump in cases in a fortnight.

"We are facing an unprecedented situation. We are dealing with a serious, unseen threat," Singapore's Minister of Manpower, Lee Boon Yang, said on Thursday.

There are fresh signs SARS is dealing a heavy economic blow across Asia, hitting hotels, airlines, restaurants, taxi companies and other services.

As the illness spreads, governments in the region fear slower economic growth and the long-term damage to Asia's image.

Nine people have died in Singapore of SARS and 126 have been infected. The government, which has revised down economic growth forecasts, has imposed sweeping controls, including home quarantine and school closures.

But the virus has kept spreading and staff in five of the city's six big public hospitals have now been infected.

On Thursday, the government said it would quarantine new foreign workers from SARS-afflicted regions such as China, Hong Kong and Canada for 10 days.

Indonesia, which has one suspected SARS case, said it had banned 8,000 workers from going to SARS-affected countries.

"I think we have to assume that the virus is in Asia to stay," said Dr Jim Hughes, head of infectious diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly 1,000 people have been infected in Hong Kong and of these, half live in Kowloon -- the most densely populated place on the planet.

"Kowloon is the worst disaster area," Fred Li, a legislator representing the district, said on Thursday.

"The disease is certain to spread. People living here have children and relatives in the next block or estate and they see each other all the time. The risk of infection is so high."

Of those infected in Kowloon, almost 300 are from a single housing estate, Amoy Gardens. More than 40 other people in neighboring estates, such as Telford Gardens, Ngau Tau Kok and Lee Kee Building, have fallen ill this week.

Hong Kong's government said on Thursday three more people had died from SARS, bringing the death toll to 30, while 28 others had been infected.

China, where SARS surfaced late last year, has the largest number of cases but officials say the epidemic is under control and on the wane.

But some doctors have disputed that, with one accusing the health minister of lying about the number of cases in Beijing.

Worldwide, more than 110 people have died and nearly 3,000 have been infected.

Malaysia on Wednesday banned all tourists from China to try to stop the spread of the disease and imposed restrictions on visitors from other places. The Philippines has said it will discourage travel to Hong Kong and southern China.

Taiwan said two flight attendants had been diagnosed with SARS, taking the total number of cases in the country to 23.

SARS has no known cure and health officials say they still don't know exactly how it spreads. Researchers have yet to pin- point the virus with certainty but believe the main culprit belongs to a family of viruses that can cause the common cold.

SARS can cause severe pneumonia that cannot be helped by drugs. About 4 percent of patients die. Officials say the illness is spread by droplets such as sneezing and coughing.

But Hong Kong health officials say an outbreak in one Kowloon housing estate, Amoy Gardens, may have been helped by cockroaches carrying contaminated human waste from sewage pipes back into apartments.

Many Amoy Gardens residents are too afraid to return to their cramped apartments.

Air travel has spread the illness around the world. As fear grows, thousands of people have stopped traveling, crippling Asia's key tourist industry.

Hong Kong's Airport Authority said on Thursday that 31 percent of the day's flights, or 163 flights, were canceled due to dampened demand for air travel because of SARS.

In Singapore, hotel occupancy rates have tumbled by more than half in three weeks. "This is a problem where people are just frightened to get on a flight, to travel," said Dinky Puri, general manager of Singapore's Holiday Inn Park View hotel.

"That to me is a crisis," he said.