Steve Quayle News Alerts

April 1, 2003
By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A hoax report about the killer virus sweeping Hong Kong sparked panic food buying and hit financial markets on Tuesday, and the government said it was placing more than 200 people into isolation camps.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, reported its first three suspected cases. One official said one of the patients had died but this could not be confirmed.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has now affected almost 1,900 people in at least a dozen countries, and 63 are known to have died.

Singapore, which ranks third worldwide in the number of its SARS cases after Hong Kong and China, said three more people had been struck as nurses screening arriving air passengers found seven sick enough to send to hospital.

In Hong Kong, where 685 people have been infected and 16 have died from the virus, the Web site hoax forced authorities to deny it would isolate the entire territory.

"We have no plan to declare Hong Kong an infected area. We have adequate supplies to provide the needs of Hong Kong citizens and there is no need for any panic run on food," Director of Health Margaret Chan told reporters.

The scare just added to the sense of dismay in the territory adjoining China's Guangdong Province, where the virus is believed to have originated four months ago.

PLAGUED ESTATE

As some supermarkets found frightened customers panic buying canned and preserved foods, Hong Kong medical teams hunted for the reason why 237 people in one residential complex in urban Kowloon had fallen ill with SARS. The housing estate is home to about a third of all infections in Hong Kong.

More than half of the patients in the complex came from a single block. Late on Tuesday, the government was evacuating more than 200 residents remaining in the Amoy Gardens block, who were under official quarantine since Monday, to special isolation camps.

Protected by white surgical coats, caps, masks and gloves, officials sent the residents on coaches.

"Of the residents (in the block), we suspect that all have been in contact with the virus and it is highly likely that the vast majority have been infected," Hong Kong Health Secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong told a news conference late on Tuesday.

He said authorities would be offering the quarantined residents the option to receive medication.

Yeoh said the evacuation was necessary to facilitate a thorough investigation of the building facilities and to protect the residents and the public. He added that feces, urine and secretions like tears could carry the virus.

Finding the cause of the Amoy outbreak is critical because it could prove or disprove a theory that the virus has mutated into an airborne plague, which could infect many more people much more quickly. Hong Kong found 75 new SARS cases on Tuesday.

So far, doctors have believed the virus spreads only when people get into contact with droplets or secretions from infected patients, emitted when they cough, spit and sneeze, for example.

Yeoh said preliminary evidence showed the virus was spread in the block through droplets, bodily secretions and environmental pollution, and there was so far no evidence of airborne spread.

HOAX

The hoaxer had copied the format of the public Internet portal of the Mingpao, one of Hong Kong's leading newspapers, and posted a message saying that the government would declare the city of seven million "an infected place."

The daily said it had identified the teenager responsible for the hoax. Police said late on Tuesday they had arrested a 14-year-old boy in connection with the case.

As the rumor spread, the Hong Kong dollar took a slight knock, and stocks fell for another day as investors calculated the loss to the tourism, airlines, property and retail sectors.

"If more and more housing estates are infected, this will bring Hong Kong to a standstill and our economy will definitely contract," said Alex Tang of Core Pacific-Yamaichi International. "We may have to lower our estimates for corporate earnings as well," he added.

Hong Kong was also hunting passengers on Thai Airways flight TG 606 from Bangkok to Hong Kong on March 29, the latest infected flight after an 80-year-old passenger was diagnosed with SARS.

INDONESIAN CHALLENGE

Controlling the disease could be a major challenge in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of some 17,000 islands and 210 million people, many of whom live in poverty in urban slums or villages with few health services.

But a spokesman for the World Health Organization (news - web sites) said it was encouraging that Indonesia appeared to have detected the disease.

"One way to contain the spread is to quickly identify cases. While it is bad news if it has arrived in Indonesia, it would be good news that the Indonesian authorities have identified it quickly," said Iain Simpson, a WHO spokesman.

Malaysia has just reported a three percent drop in daily passenger arrivals at Kuala Lumpur international airport "seven days before and after" SARS was detected in the region.

In and around Hong Kong, airline bookings were down 20 to 30 percent, and flights have been canceled.

Thai authorities said on Tuesday tourists found in public places with SARS symptoms could face a maximum of six months in jail or a fine of up to 10,000 baht ($233) or both. But they said it would be difficult to enforce the order.

In Singapore, the Catholic Church drained containers of holy water at church entrances and switched to giving communion wafers to the hands of worshippers, instead of on to their tongues.

Some medical officials have issued pleas for calm. "I can't say this often enough, the risk to the general public is extremely low," said medical officer Sheela Basrur in Toronto. Canada has reported more than 120 cases of infection.

On Tuesday, France recommended travelers postpone trips to Hanoi, Singapore and all of China, in particular Hong Kong and Guangdong province.

In Switzerland, the health ministry said it had told exhibitors at a jewelry tradefair this week not to employ people arriving from China, Hong Kong, Singapore or Vietnam.

Australia reported its first suspected case on Tuesday, but the affected person recovered and did not infect anyone else.

The hope held out by doctors is that the virus's detailed makeup will be pinpointed shortly. Some victims have been successfully treated using antibodies in serum from recovered patients, which suggests they developed some level of immunity.

The World Health Organization has now reported confirmed SARS cases in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, France, Ireland and Italy.

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