Website Hoax on Killer Virus Triggers Hong Kong Panic
Tue Apr 1, 8:55 AM ET Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Tan Ee Lyn
HONG KONG (Reuters) - A teenager's Web Site hoax 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.
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Slideshow: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
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 12 countries, and 63 are known to have died.
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.
As some supermarkets found frightened customers pulling canned and preserved foods from their shelves, Hong Kong medical teams hunted for the reason why over 200 people in one apartment complex in urban Kowloon had fallen ill with SARS.
Protected by white surgical coats, caps, masks and gloves, investigators combed through the Amoy Gardens apartments, home to almost a third of all cases in Hong Kong. Residents there were under official quarantine.
The government said it was evacuating more than 200 Amoy Gardens residents to special isolation camps.
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 were investigating.
As the rumor spread, the Hong Kong dollar took a slight knock, and stocks fell for another day as investors calculated the loss to businesses in the tourism, airlines, property, and retail sectors.
PLAGUED APARTMENTS
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 believed it was only spread by contact with infected patients, through coughing, spitting, and sneezing.
The race to find carriers of the disease is on. Many Amoy Gardens residents had already fled their homes before the quarantine and the government is looking for them.
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.
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.
With Hong Kong so badly affected by the SARS outbreak, businessmen were trying to assess the possible economic damage.
"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.
AIRLINES HIT
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 are 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.
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. |
