The Philippines reported its first deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) yesterday and a World Health Organization (WHO) official said SARS could become a horrifying epidemic if it spread in China's provinces or in nations like India and Bangladesh, where people live cheek-to-cheek and medical facilities are poor.
"There will be various countries in the world where we would be really concerned because we don't think they have the capacity to stem the tide once it is introduced," WHO official Wolfgang Preiser told reporters in Shanghai.
"It may have happened already. We don't know."
SARS, a respiratory infection for which there is no known cure and which has a mortality rate of about six percent, has killed over 265 people and infected about 4,600 in 25 nations.
It has caused widespread alarm in China, which has reported 110 deaths and in Hong Kong, where 109 have died.
The Philippines reported its first two deaths from the virus, joining China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand to have SARS fatalities.
Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said the Philippine dead were a nursing assistant visiting home from Toronto and her father.
Beijing city officials sealed off a third hospital, closed college dormitories and ordered 4,000 people who might have been exposed to the killer virus to stay at home under quarantine.
The closure of the Ditan Hospital in northern Beijing came less than two weeks after foreign reporters were allowed to tour the facility, officially touted then as a showcase of the government's SARS preparedness.
It wasn't immediately clear how many patients and staff were in the hospital, which has 500 beds and 643 workers.
Visitors couldn't go into Ditan but medical staffers were allowed to leave the hospital, which specializes in infectious diseases. A hospital official said the measure is meant to prevent the spread of the SARS virus among visitors and non-SARS patients.
Dormitories at the Northern Jiaotong University and the Central University of Finance and Economics have also been closed off, affecting 600 students.
Seventeen cases and one death linked to SARS have been reported at Central University, while Northern Jiaotong has had 14 cases. All cases have been hospitalized, officials said.
So far, the Health Ministry has reported 42 SARS deaths in Beijing and a total death toll of 115 nationwide. The country has reported a total of 2,601 cases, with more than 870 in Beijing.
In a report to the country's legislature, Vice Premier Wu Yi said China will spend 3.5 billion yuan (US$420 million) to set up a nationwide health network to fight SARS.
Another 2 billion yuan (US$240 million) will be set aside to pay for emergency medical services for people with SARS who can't afford their own care, Wu said.
Meanwhile, Asian health chiefs, meeting in Malaysia yesterday, are proposing to conduct strict pre-travel checks on passengers at airports and seaports in the battle against the SARS virus.
A draft statement of proposals, likely to be issued today, also calls for travel bans on suspected SARS sufferers and surveillance of people who have had contact with them.
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