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WHO Raises SARS Death Rate Estimate
Thu May 8, 6:24 AM ET
By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer
BEIJING - China announced measures to stem the mounting devastation to its economy caused by SARS (news - web sites), while the World Health Organization (news - web sites) said Thursday it had revised the global death rate from the disease sharply upward to 14-15 percent.
The WHO, which had previously put the rate at 6-10 percent, said age appears to be a key factor in surviving SARS, with less than one percent of SARS patients aged 24 or younger dying, compared to more than 50 percent for those over 65.
The U.N. health agency then extended a SARS travel warning to Taiwan and to two more Chinese provinces, and Russian officials ordered airlines and cargo carriers to suspend reservations on flights to mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
"WHO is now recommending as a measure of precaution that people planning to travel to Tianjin and Inner Mongolia provinces of China and Taipei in Taiwan ... consider postponing all but essential travel," said a statement by the U.N. agency.
The WHO revisions are based on data from Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam. They follow a study earlier this week that found the death rate of SARS patients in Hong Kong was around 20 percent.
The worldwide toll from SARS passed 500 dead and 7,000 infected on Thursday, with China announcing five more fatalities and Hong Kong four more.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome has battered China's economy, as travel bans and warnings not to visit have affected airlines, hotels and other travel businesses. Private economists have cut their forecasts of China's economic growth this year — projected at 7 percent by the government — by up to 1.5 percentage points.
"The current SARS situation is still grim, and the economic impact is more pronounced each day," a dispatch from the official Xinhua news agency said.
To stem the damage, China issued new economic measures during a Cabinet meeting led by Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday. The measures appeared on Thursday in the official Xinhua News Agency and on the front of the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily.
The reports said China ordered businesses in SARS-affected areas not to lay off employees and told local officials to adopt policies to help aviation, tourism, restaurants and other businesses damaged by SARS, Xinua said.
The central government also asked local officials to ensure that farmers plant and harvest their crops. The reports didn't mention any promises of government financial aid or give details about how the plans would be carried out.
Meanwhile, more than 120 officials accused of negligence in responding to China's SARS outbreak have been fired or received other punishments over the past month, Xinhua reported. Officials in 15 provinces have been reprimanded for trying to conceal cases of SARS, leaving their posts or other offenses, it said.
Joining China's anti-SARS battle is Houston Rocket's basketball star Yao Ming, who plans to host a telethon Sunday in his hometown of Shanghai to raise money for the illness.
Early Thursday, WHO investigators traveled to a northern Chinese province to study how to stop SARS from spreading in the poor countryside. A major outbreak in densely populated farming areas would be a catastrophe because rural hospitals are ill-equipped to deal with the epidemic.
The four-member WHO team arrived in the city of Baoding in Hebei province, which borders hard-hit Beijing, Xinhua said. It said the WHO officials planned to inspect hospitals, talk to medical workers and visit rural areas around Baoding during the five-day visit.
Xinhua said the team will investigate Hebei's ability "to identify, report, contain, isolate and care for people with the disease."
Densely populated Hebei on Wednesday reported 21 new cases of infection, raising its total to at least 134. The province's number of probable cases has "risen sharply," doubling to 98 between April 30 and May 4, WHO said on its Web site.
The province is home to many migrant laborers who work in Beijing, and the WHO has said it's worried that the frequent traffic of people might spread the disease.
In the United States, thousands of customs and immigration inspectors were being trained to spot SARS symptoms and were ordered to detain those who exhibit them as part of attempts to prevent a U.S. outbreak. Symptoms include high fever, dry cough and breathing trouble.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy said 22 major U.S. airports would have public health officials on site.
The WHO revisions, released in a statement on its Web site, said the SARS death rate is below 1 percent for people aged 24 or younger, rising to 6 percent for those 25 to 44, 15 percent in those 45 to 64 and more than 50 percent for those over 65.
WHO said studying only those cases where the patient has died or made a full recovery could skew the figures while the outbreak is still continuing because the average time from illness to death is shorter than the average time from illness to recovery.
Its own method takes account of the length of time for which patients have survived — looking at the risk of dying in the first week of illness, the risk in the second week, and so on. WHO said this gave a death rate of 14 percent in Singapore and 15 percent in Hong Kong.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) so far puts the death rate at 6.6 percent |
