A World Health Organization (WHO) expert arrived in Beijing yesterday to help China find out whether the country's first suspected SARS patient in half a year has the killer virus.
Another joint team of WHO and health ministry experts was to head to the southern province of Guangdong to aid testing on the 32-year-old television producer, whose temperature was normal and who appeared to be doing well, Beijing-based WHO spokesman Roy Wadia said.
But a Ministry of Health official said it would take "several days" to arrive at a diagnosis.
None of the 42 people quarantined for having been in contact with the patient has developed a fever or shown other symptoms of the deadly virus, officials said.
"Up till now, we haven't found any new suspected SARS patients, including those who had close contact with the suspected SARS patient," one Guangdong health official said.
SARS emerged in Guangdong late last year before it was spread by travellers to nearly 30 countries where some 8,000 infections were logged, spurring mass panic and forcing people to cancel trips and stay away from crowded spots.
Chinese shares inched lower yesterday morning as the SARS scare prompted selling in airline and tourism stocks.
If confirmed, the Guangdong case would be the first not linked to laboratory accidents since the WHO declared the outbreak over in July. Two recent cases in Singapore and Taiwan were linked to accidents in medical research laboratories.
The Singapore patient has recovered and been discharged and the Taiwan patient is expected to be released soon.
News of China's suspected SARS case comes just over three weeks before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday when millions of people in China and across East and Southeast Asia travel to visit relatives.
Singapore has tightened health checks on travellers from southern China. Passengers stepping off planes from Guangzhou have their temperature checked by thermal image scanners before entering the island-state's airport.
"All arriving passengers are screened for their temperature at the arrival hall, but passengers from Guangzhou have their temperature checked at the aerobridge," said Albert Tjoeng, a spokesman at the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.
Despite a battery of tests, Chinese doctors and laboratory workers have yet to make a final diagnosis on the man, who was first diagnosed with pneumonia in his right lower lung on Dec. 16.
"The tests have been so confusing," said Wadia. "There's been some positives, some negatives and the positives come from a sort of test group that has a high number of false positives.
"That's why it's important that we get the samples tested independently as well, because the more testing that is done by different sources, the less the statistical margin of error."
But it was not yet clear when the WHO specialist would travel to Guangdong, Wadia said. The expert had been invited by the Chinese government to sift through data collected so far on the suspected patient and observe ongoing testing.
The official Xinhua News Agency said life in the provincial capital Guangzhou, where the suspected SARS patient had been hospitalized, was normal.
In Beijing, where traffic-choked streets appeared eerily deserted for several weeks in spring, the going was slow during a typical Monday morning rush hour. No one was seen wearing protective masks, de rigeur when the SARS spread was at its peak.
Thirty-two health workers who had been in contact with the suspected patient were among those quarantined, the official China Daily newspaper said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese