Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 16, 2003
Thomas Crampton/IHT International Herald Tribune

HONG KONG Taiwan’s minister of health resigned Friday for mishandling the outbreak of SARS on the island, while Hong Kong and China reported the lowest level of new infections in weeks. Health Minister Twu Shiing-jer had been criticized for acting too slowly in response to calls by the Taipei city government to declare the disease ‘‘infectious’’ and carry out strict control measures. Twu said he felt the SARS cases among medical workers were his responsibility.

Singapore, which had feared a setback in its battle against the disease, had hopes rekindled Friday that it may soon be taken off the World Health Organization’s list of SARS-affected areas.

Worldwide, the disease has infected more than 7,700 people and killed more than 613, with the vast majority of victims in Asia.

Initial tests of patients from a potential new cluster in a Singapore mental institute returned negative results for the infection. Before the suspected cases turned up Tuesday, Singapore had hoped to get a clean bill of health from the UN agency after eliminating local transmission of the disease for 20 days, twice the estimated incubation period of the virus.

Test results on the patients should be finalized by Monday, said Balaji Sadasivan, Singapore’s minister of state for health. ‘‘So far, none of the tests that have come in have shown SARS,’’ Sadasivan said in a televised interview, ‘‘ but we need to wait until all the testing is done. It could be flu, it could be something else.’’

Although infection rates have dropped, regions affected by SARS must avoid the temptation of hastily declaring victory over the deadly virus in discussions with the World Health Organization, a U.S. diplomat said Friday in Hong Kong.

‘‘The more the public around the world has confidence in the judgments the health professionals make — the World Health Organization and national centers — the more they’ll be persuaded the time has come to move on and start picking up again,’’ James Keith, U.S. consul general in Hong Kong, said in a speech to the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.

‘‘Health professionals need to make their decisions on professional grounds,’’ he said. ‘‘This is not the sort of thing that can be negotiated.’’

Hong Kong officials have said that the criteria for lifting the WHO travel warning were too restrictive on the territory.

Although Hong Kong was one of the hardest-hit cities in the world, the number of new infections has dropped to single digits for nearly two weeks. Due to the backlog of patients infected during the peak of the outbreak, however, the city remains far above the World Health Organization’s threshold for removal of the advisory against travel.

Hong Kong’s 400 active cases are well above the level of 60 SARS patients required for removal of agency’s travel warning. The territory reported three more cases of the disease Friday, the lowest single-day increase since the outbreak began nearly eight weeks ago.

Hong Kong has had 1,706 infections and 238 fatalities.

Mainland China, meanwhile, reported 39 new infections, the lowest level since daily updates on the disease by the Chinese authorities began nearly one month ago. China, which has more than two-thirds of the world’s SARS infections, has had a total of 5,191 infections and 275 deaths.

In Taiwan, — where the number of SARS-infected patients has increased nearly tenfold in the last three weeks following an outbreak in Ho Ping Hospital in Taipei. ‘‘I am saddened that so many medical people were infected,’’ Twu, the health minister who resigned, told the Parliament. ‘‘I feel uneasy and I should shoulder the responsibility.’’ ‘‘Minister Twu verbally offered to resign last night and tendered the formal resignation this morning when we met,’’ Prime Minister Yu Shyi-kun said Friday.

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