Sun, Jun 08, 2003 page2

• SARS death toll remains unchanged for 10 days

  FALLING NUMBERS The amount of new suspected cases has gone down in the last few days and a few cases were reclassified or diagnosed as benign

  • By Debby Wu / STAFF REPORTER
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  The Department of Health (DOH) yesterday reported three more SARS cases as officials looked into the cause of an outbreak at Yangming Hospital (YMH) on Thursday.

  The death toll from SARS remained unchanged at 81 for the 10th straight day.

  The total number of SARS-probable cases fell from 678 the previous day to 677, after four cases were reclassified.

  Superintendent of Taipei YMH Wang Tai-lung (王泰隆) admitted yesterday that there were some problems with trafficking inside the hospital, which might be the reason for the in-hospital cluster infection.

  "Yangming Hospital is 20 years old and because of that its trafficking plan is not ideal and its buildings are not equipped with the best negative pressure isolation rooms available," Wang said.

  "Moreover, the care workers have become a blind spot within the hospital's focus area. They are not hospital employees but the hospital should also pay attention to them," Wang said.

  Wu Wen-hao (吳文豪), deputy director of the Taipei City Bureau of Health (BOH), pointed out that care workers may often move about among different rooms, chatting or eating with other care workers, hence they might spread the virus to their fellow care workers and even some patients.

  Yesterday there were four more cases reported in YMH, pushing the number of SARS patients to 11. Five were probable cases and six were suspected cases. All of them had been transferred to the Armed Force's Sung Shan Hospital for further treatment.

  Of the 11 cases, four are care workers and seven are hospital patients, according to the hospital's deputy superintendent Dr. Yang Wen-li (楊文理).

  According to further investigations carried out by the BOH, it is suspected that the mother of an infected noodle vendor from Hsinchuang (新莊) might have been the index patient in the hospital.

  The Hsinchuang woman stayed in the hospital from May 17 to 27, while the deceased 90-year-old woman, surnamed Shen, was admitted to YMH on April 9 and started developing a very high fever on May 25.

  Their stays in the hospital overlapped and there is a possibility that Shen contracted the disease from the Hsinchuang woman, because they were treated in the same negative pressure room. Shen then became a source of other transmissions.

  YMH, however, tentatively excluded the possibility of Shen being a SARS patient, said Wu. The BOH was conducting further investigations to get a clearer picture of the infection route within the hospital.

  While YMH's cluster infection raised tension just as SARS seemed to be receding, a few days ago there were fears of a community outbreak in South Airport Community (南機場) in Chungcheng district.
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