Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 28, 2003

Russia on Wednesday confirmed its first case of SARS, reporting that a man in the Russian far east near the Chinese border had been infected. Elsewhere, Taiwan reported 14 new SARS cases and five deaths on Wednesday, as the World Health Organization said the island had made important strides toward controlling hospital infections.

“ON THE BASIS of medical analysis, this morning we received information confirming the first SARS case on Russian territory,” a spokeswoman for Russia’s top epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, said by telephone.

The man diagnosed as suffering from the flu-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome lives in Blagoveshchensk on the Amur river, which forms the frontier with China. Hundreds have died from the disease in China.

“The diagnosis is indisputable, it is SARS,” Interfax news agency quoted Onishchenko as saying. “This is our final answer.”

The patient, under observation for weeks, had stayed in a hotel in Blagoveshchensk often used by shuttle traders and tourists from China, where SARS originated.

Russia has a 2,280-mile land border with China, where more than 320 people have died from SARS, and a 2,178-mile border with Mongolia, which has also reported a number of cases.

Given the length of a border regularly crossed by legal and illegal Chinese traders and immigrants, Russia has for weeks been making preparations for the appearance of a SARS case.

The SARS virus has so far killed more than 740 people and infected over 8,000 worldwide, though it has largely been confined to east and southeast Asia.

TAIWAN’S CASES

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome rose from 596 to 610, including 11 newly reported cases and three persons reclassified from suspect to probable, the Department of Health said. The death toll on the island now stands at 81.

Taiwan has the world’s third-worst outbreak of SARS, though the spread of the disease has slowed in recent days from a record daily high of 65 new cases last Thursday.

“Health officials have launched a widespread information campaign, set up a major screening program and established fever clinics to keep persons suspected of having SARS out of contact with others,” the WHO said on its Web site.

“In the assessment of WHO, these efforts are beginning to bear fruit. The situation in Taiwan is expected to improve gradually in the coming days and weeks,” the U.N. body said in a statement dated May 27.

Taiwan officials cautiously predicted SARS had peaked on the island, after a slew of hospital infections — accounting for more than 90 percent of cases — appeared to be coming under control. More than 100 SARS patients have recovered.

But Taiwan continues to bar tourists from SARS-affected areas like Hong Kong and China, and says business travelers should quarantine themselves for 10 days after arriving in Taiwan.

TORONTO TEAM PROBES SCHOOL

In Canada, health services said they would hold a news conference on Wednesday to discuss “possible SARS exposure” at a Toronto-area high school after a student went to class with symptoms of the virus. Authorities said they tried to contact everyone who attended the school between last Wednesday and last Friday.

The investigation into a possible case at the school comes as medical staff at some Toronto hospitals, fearing they allowed SARS back into a city that thought the battle was over, have resumed donning face masks and layers of gloves to guard against the spread of the killer virus.

The WHO on Monday restored Toronto to its list of SARS-affected areas, 12 days after it had been taken off.

Masks first came off in mid-May in all hospital departments except SARS wards, because officials thought that SARS had stopped spreading.

But doctors now think the mystery virus lingered in at least one hospital ward for weeks, infecting patients, nurses and visitors.

Twenty-seven people have died from SARS in the Toronto area, the only place outside Asia where the virus has killed people. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, had 12 active probable cases of SARS on Tuesday, and 3,442 people were in home quarantine.

CHINA RAIDS WILDLIFE MARKETS

Meanwhile, forestry officials in southern China raided wildlife markets on Wednesday under new restrictions meant to control SARS.

The raids came after a WHO scientist said Tuesday that SARS antibodies found in workers who handled exotic animals at a market in southern China backed the theory that the disease jumped from animals to humans.

Authorities in Guangdong province banned trade in wildlife this week, traveling animal shows were ordered to cancel performances, and restaurants that specialize in wild game dishes have been ordered to turn over any live animals.

In the provincial capital of Guangzhou, agents raided four wild animal markets, the Guangzhou Daily newspaper reported on Wednesday. It said they seized 267 pheasants, 54 foxes, 55 pounds of snakes and other wild birds.

In Guangdong, restaurants that serve wildlife — populary known in China as “wild flavor” — were inspected, along with ports, railway stations, and trucking terminals, the report said. Animals suspected of carrying disease, including civet cats, monkeys, snakes, and bats must be isolated and checked, said the order published in the provincial newspaper Yangcheng Evening News.

China’s Health Ministry on Wednesday announced four new SARS deaths and four new cases of infection on the mainland. Beijing accounted for three of the fatalities and three of the cases, the ministry said. The fourth death was in the northeastern province of Jilin. SARS has killed at least 325 people on China’s mainland, with more than 5,323 infected.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government said on Wednesday that the SARS virus has killed one more person and infected two others in the territory. The latest figures bring the local death toll from SARS to 270 and the cumulative number of cases to 1,730, a hospital official said. Ten more patients were discharged, bringing the total number of discharged patients to 1,295.

OTHER SARS DEVELOPMENTS:

Voicing its alarm at the spread of the SARS virus at its annual assembly, the WHO vowed to overhaul outdated international health regulations to deal more effectively with epidemics.

Preliminary lab results indicate that American doctor Chesley L. Richards who became ill in Taiwan while investigating SARS does not have the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Cat lovers are rescuing stray felines from Singapore’s streets and sending them to an animal shelter in Malaysia to save them from being killed in a government cleanliness campaign aimed at fighting SARS. There are an estimated 80,000 stray cats in Singapore, but the cleanliness campaign targets only those caught near markets and other places that serve food.

Hungry tigers and lions have been attacking each other at China’s Xiamen Haicang Wild Animal Park which said it can’t afford to feed its animals due to a 98 percent fall in visitors amid SARS fears. A 5-year-old lion was killed and two tigers injured in brawls at the park.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/885653.asp?0cv=CB10