A man visiting Las Vegas has been isolated with a possible case of SARS, and health officials insisted Tuesday that area residents and tourists were not at risk.
"There is no public health threat,"Clark County Health District spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said.
It is the second time a case of severe acute respiratory syndrome has been suspected in Las Vegas and the third in Nevada.
The people isolated and monitored in the two previous incidents have shown no further symptoms and tests have been negative, officials in Las Vegas and Reno said.
Sizemore said the man in the latest case also agreed to voluntary isolation. She provided no information about his identity or where he was staying.
"The patient is not being isolated in any public accommodations or hotel,"she said. Hospitalization is not required for voluntary isolation cases.
__________________________
U.S. Approves Force in Detaining Possible SARS Carriers
By PHILIP SHENON
ASHINGTON, May 6 — As part of the government's efforts to prevent an epidemic of SARS in the United States, the Bush administration has authorized immigration and customs agents at the nation's international airports to use force to detain arriving passengers who appear to have symptoms of the disease, senior administration officials said.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for immigration and customs inspections at airports and other border crossings, has provided masks and gloves to thousands of its airport inspectors in the last month as part of the agency's effort to stem transmission of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which can be deadly.
At training sessions, officials said, the inspectors have been told that their screening duties now go beyond passports and baggage and that they need to give extra attention to the health of passengers arriving on 51 daily flights from Asian cities where the SARS outbreak has been most severe, including Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Officials said that the tightened screening procedures had gone into effect gradually in the last few weeks and that, so far, no airline passengers had required forcible detention, suggesting that the efforts of Asian governments and major airlines to prevent passengers infected with SARS from boarding trans-Pacific flights had been successful.
Under the new procedures, officials said, immigration and customs agents identifying arriving passengers who appear to be ill with any SARS symptoms, including high fever or breathing trouble, will be authorized to detain them and summon health inspectors.
If SARS is confirmed, they said, the passenger would be moved to a hospital or other medical facility and placed under mandatory quarantine. An executive order signed last month by President Bush lets the government quarantine people infected with SARS.
_____________________________________
Chinese city quarantines 10,000
By James Kynge in Beijing
Published: May 6 2003 21:22 | Last Updated: May 6 2003 21:22
Authorities in the Chinese city of Nanjing on Tuesday resorted to extreme measures to protect the city of 6.4m people against Sars pneumonia.
Nearly 10,000 people have been quarantined, jail terms have been threatened for those who conceal their symptoms and the city is virtually sealed off to travellers from Sars-infected parts of China.
The measures, by far the most extreme seen yet in China's battle against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, were not triggered by a brisk new outbreak - Nanjing has only one confirmed case of Sars, compared with 1,960 in Beijing. |
