As millions of Chinese prepare for a weeklong holiday, the deadly pneumonia sweeping Asia poses a dilemma for their government. Does it curb travel and damp spending that's vital to the economy, or take the risk infection will spread through the world's biggest population?
China only yesterday revealed the wider extent of an outbreak that started in a southern province five months ago. A week after Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said it's "not a very serious disease," health officials said deaths last month rose by a third to 46 and infections climbed by almost half to 1,190.
With just four weeks to go before the May Day holiday, the government hasn't issued any health warnings about the disease, even though the World Health Organization says such a massive movement of people could spread the virus. Last year, 70 million holiday travelers spent about 27.6 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion), according to China's official statistics.
"We hope the Chinese government realizes the significance of having such a magnitude of people on the move around the country, when this infection has not been cleared up," said Peter Cordingley, the World Health Organization's Western Pacific spokesman in Manila.
The weeklong holiday was created by the government three years ago to fuel consumer spending and stimulate an economy that needs to grow 7 percent a year to provide jobs for urban residents coming into the workforce.
Curtailing holiday travel could dent GDP.
Last year, tourism contributed 3.8 percent to the nation's total output of goods and services.
It's no small matter for China, which depends on consumers to take up the slack of any slide in exports caused by the war in Iraq and lower demand in Western economies.
Though the state-owned media have reported little about the disease in China, word has spread by cell phone, text messaging and Internet chat rooms.
Some would-be travelers have altered holiday plans, according to travel agents. That mirrors an Asia-wide slowdown in air services and hotel bookings, caused both by the impact of the Iraq war and the spread of pneumonia cases in China and neighbors such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
"We're sitting around with nothing to do," said Steven Zhu, manager of Shanghai NGS Dragon Air Service Co, which organizes domestic and overseas tours. "Seats which would have been sold out this time last year are still there. The phones hardly ring.
If they do at all, it's usually to cancel a trip."
Last year, 219 million Chinese took to the roads during weeklong public holidays in February, May and October. Their traveling, holiday shopping and dining generated 86.5 billion yuan (US$10.4 billion) of revenue, or 22 percent of receipts earned from tourism last year, according to government statistics.
From Asia to North America, 2,223 people have contracted severe acute respiratory syndrome since November, and 78 people have died, the World Health Organization said. China, Hong Kong and Singapore are the most infected, and Thailand has reported seven cases of the disease with two deaths.
About half a million Chinese were expected to take trips abroad during the nation's May holidays, to Thailand, Australia and 20 other government-approved destinations.
If the outbreak lasts into May, travel revenue and retail sales could slump so much around Asia that the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan could be driven into recession, said Andy Xie, Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd's managing director and chief economist.
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