Singapore Shuts Market Hit by SARS Infections
Apr. 20, 2003 00:44 EDT
SINGAPORE - Singapore has ordered a food market to shut after three people who worked there contracted the SARS virus, threatening the government's battle to contain the deadly disease to hospitals.
A taxi driver who ferried one of the workers to the wholesale vegetable and produce market has also been infected, the government said late on Saturday as it announced five new cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
The number of confirmed cases in Singapore has risen to 177, the fourth highest in the world, and Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said on Saturday the city state could be facing its worst crisis.
Fourteen people have died in Singapore and another two deaths are suspected SARS cases. More than 200 people have died worldwide.
The outbreak at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market was a blow to hopes that the disease would be confined mainly to patients and staff in hospitals, where the bulk of Singapore's infections has occurred, and people who have had close contact with them.
The health ministry was trying to trace on Sunday those who might have been in contact with the workers at the market, which will be shut for three days.
Radio and newspapers on the island state of four million asked people who had been to the market between April 5 and 18, a span of two weeks in which infections could have spread, to be alert for SARS symptoms such as a fever and cough.
One of the infected workers, who died on April 12, was the brother of a hospitalized SARS patient. The worker and his wife, who has been diagnosed a probable SARS case, were regular passengers of the ill taxi driver.
The taxi driver was the second to contract SARS, a development that is likely to scare more people off taking cabs. Business was already falling after a driver with a history of ferrying passengers to hospitals came down with SARS last week.
Goh and other officials warned Singaporeans at the weekend not to allow fears of the disease to take the fragile economy into a tailspin.
The prime minister said the battle to isolate and contain the outbreak was showing some success in limiting infection rates, but more efforts were need to tackle a climate of fear that was causing widespread damage to the transport and tourism sector.
Some 100 people in Singapore have recovered from SARS and the authorities are closely watching a further 77 people, including five children, who may have caught the disease. Seventeen are seriously ill.
The government has taken aggressive steps to contain SARS, quarantining hundreds, closing schools and stationing nurses at air and sea ports.
Indonesia's One Probable SARS Victim in Hong Kong
Apr. 19, 2003 07:03 EDT
JAKARTA- A man identified as having Indonesia's only ``probable'' case of SARS has flown to Hong Kong, health officials in Jakarta and Hong Kong said on Saturday.
Authorities have not revealed the name of the 47-year-old British national, but he was reported to be an ethnic Chinese with Hong Kong roots working for a textile company in Indonesia.
He is suspected of developing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome after traveling to Hong Kong and Singapore, and was allowed to leave hospital to return to his Indonesian residence after recovering.
``He had recovered and he had to be monitored for 10 days,'' Indonesian health ministry official Sjafii Ahmad told Reuters. ``But yesterday he left for Hong Kong without our knowledge.''
He added, however, that Indonesian authorities had been able to learn of the airline he was on and advise it and passengers of the situation. They had also informed Hong Kong authorities.
In Hong Kong, Director of Health Margaret Chan told a news conference Hong Kong officials had located the man and would examine him.
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, has no confirmed cases of SARS but several suspected cases have been reported.
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