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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: XBrit who wrote (90034)	4/4/2003 5:43:43 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I'm pretty dubious about this report. The news source has to be also considered I guess. I don't know anything about bugs and stuff, so I have no idea. Here is the latest news on it from Canada. For some reason few children have been affected. thestatesman.net SARS sneaks into Canada Agence France Presse TORONTO/LONDON, April 4. — The spread of SARS across continents has triggered heightened alarm. Seven people have died in Canada and perplexed doctors in London are pointing their fingers at China – the suspected epicentre – for failing to notify the world sooner of the epidemic. Health officials in Canada tried to pacify people after the seventh person, affected by SARS, died. But a new SARS case among an elderly person in Canada — the group most hit by the deadly atypical pneumonia — forced the closure of a retirement home and its 121 aged residents, 70 employees and numerous visitors went into voluntary quarantine. In London, top medical experts said they were perplexed by the killer respiratory disease. “This is an an organism which has really puzzled us. Right now, we’re very much concerned,” Dr Donald Henderson, principal science advisor at the US department of health said yesterday. Dr Henderson, who was speaking on the sidelines of a seminar in London yesterday, said: “We’re having problems even visualising how the transmission is taking place,” Dr Henderson said. At first, SARS was believed to be transmitted by heavy droplets, spread in close proximity by someone who, for instance, sneezes or coughs. But cases in a 33-storey apartment in Hong Kong has raised the theory that the virus may also be carried by water or by small aerosolised droplets that linger in the air and are then inhaled. Some think the virus may survive outside the body for two or three hours and that a healthy person can pick it up and infect themselves by touching their nose or mouth. Dr Henderson, a veteran who for 10 years headed the WHO’s vaccination programme to eradicate smallpox, said he was puzzled why a dozen people had become infected at Hong Kong’s Metropole Hotel, some of whom went on travel to other countries and spread SARS, but the hotel’s staff had inexplicably remained healthy. Another puzzle was why so few children had been infected by the disease. Dr Robyn Gerson of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said one of the big questions was whether there could be “silent carriers” — people who have the virus but neither show nor feel any of the typical SARS symptoms of a fever, wheezing, aches or coughing. “That is a huge worry because those people won’t even know to stay out of contact,” she said. In another development, WHO experts warned they could be in for the “long haul” as they began a probe in China’s Guangdong province today into the origins of an outbreak of deadly pneumonia. New cases: Hong Kong today reported 27 additional cases of the deadly disease, taking the total to 662, the Hong Kong Health Department said. China cancels ILO meet BEIJING, April 4. — The International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Chinese government have postponed an employment forum in Beijing next week after some foreign delegates refused to come over fears of SARS infection, a Chinese official said today. The ILO and China’s ministry of labour decided to cancel the China Employment Forum due to “a situation beyond their control”, an ILO statement said. “Some of the foreign delegates declined to come to China because of atypical pneumonia,” a labour ministry official said. SARS has killed at least 47 people in mainland China. — AFP