Singapore traces SARS "super spreader"
Singapore traces SARS "super spreader"
Jason Szep
Reuters
Singapore
Singapore's largest hospital struggled to contain the Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus on Friday after tracing
the origin of a mysterious batch of infections -- a man in his
60s whose multiple ailments masked the illness while he
unwittingly passed it on to 19 people.
Over the border in Malaysia, officials said 13 crew of a
cruise ship which had sailed to Singapore and Thailand had been
quarantined after one was identified as a "probable" SARS
sufferer.
Singapore General Hospital, where 19 people, including staff,
patients and visitors, have caught SARS in a week, fears the
virus could have spread to other wards.
Nine people have died of 133 confirmed cases in the tiny city
state -- a rate of 6.7 percent, above the global average of about
4 percent. It has the world's fourth-highest number of cases.
"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.
He was speaking as governments around the world tightened
their defenses against SARS. Singapore has deployed surveillance
cameras and the United States has broadened its definition of who
is at risk.
Singapore General Hospital Medical Board chairman Tay Boon
Keng listed the elderly Chinese man as a SARS "super spreader",
and said he "fell through a crack" after being transferred from a
hospital that handles SARS victims exclusively.
In green and clean Singapore meanwhile, ministers are
following Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's lead and abandoning
handshakes in public crowds or when holding meetings.
Instead they are adopting a traditional Thai bow with both
hands clasped.
In the former British colony of Hong Kong, hospital workers
said the epidemic had pushed the health care system to the brink
of collapse.
Worldwide, more than 110 people have died and nearly 3,000
have been infected.
A quarter of Hong Kong's 1,000 cases of SARS, marked by fever,
cough and severe pneumonia, are health workers, including 12
diagnosed with the illness on Thursday.
Hong Kong said three more people had died of SARS, bringing
the toll to 30 and officials feared the illness could spread
through the city's crowded apartment blocks.
World Health Organization (WHO) teams were in Beijing and in
China's Guangdong province, the source of the infection, but WHO
infectious disease chief Dr David Heymann said they would like
permission to look further.
"China is a worrisome area because (we) don't know what is
going on outside Beijing," he said in an interview.
The United States widened its definition of people at risk of
SARS, saying anyone who passed through an airport in an affected
country should watch for symptoms of respiratory illness and
contact a doctor immediately if they developed fever or cough.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes
its strict measures and broad definition of who is a suspected
SARS patient has helped keep the disease from spreading in the
United States where there are 166 suspected cases in 30 states.
CDC and European researchers both said they had come closer to
proving that a new virus from the coronavirus family causes SARS.
They found the virus, which may have jumped from animals to
humans, in most patients with SARS.
The CDC has developed three tests for the virus and is working
to get a licensed version that can be used widely, although this
could take at least a week and probably longer.