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To: ~digs who wrote (402)	4/23/2004 10:52:19 PM
From: ~digs	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7944

China announces SARS death heraldsun.news.com.au 24apr04 CHINA was today screening thousands of travellers for fevers at airports and train stations in a massive effort to block a new outbreak of SARS, after it reported the world's first death from the disease this year. Hundreds of people with possible exposure to the SARS virus were being held under medical observation. The government announced yesterday that two laboratory workers were confirmed to have the disease, while a nurse was listed as a suspected case. The confirmed patients were identified as a 31-year-old man from Beijing and a 26-year-old woman in central Anhui province - both lab workers at China's Centres for Disease Control in Beijing. The 20-year-old nurse works in a Beijing hospital. The fatality was the mother of the woman from Anhui, and was believed to have caught the virus from her daughter, the government said. The daughter was treated last month at a Beijing hospital, where she came into contact with the nurse. "When the daughter was ill, the mother accompanied her all the time," the Health Ministry said on its website. The mother, hospitalised on April 8 with a fever and unidentified virus, died on Monday and was cremated, the ministry said. A fever is one of the key symptoms of SARS, along with coughing and shortness of breath. The ministry said the mother had a heart problem, although it wasn't clear whether that was related to her death. The women took several train journeys together between Beijing and Anhui and might have exposed many other people to the virus, said Maria Cheng, a World Health Organisation spokeswoman in Geneva. Hospitals along the rail line have been put on alert to report any cases of pneumonia, she said. "Here it looks like we had human-to-human transmission and there's clearly a travel history where they might have exposed other people," Cheng said. The WHO is considering sending a team of experts to China to help officials there to trace the women's movements over the past few weeks, she said. Severe acute respiratory syndrome emerged in China's southern province of Guangdong in late 2002 and killed 349 people in the country's mainland. Worldwide, 774 deaths were reported. More than 8000 people were sickened. China reported its last SARS fatality in July. In December and January, four cases were reported in Guangdong. All four patients recovered. China was harshly criticised for withholding information about the disease when it first broke out. This time, China will act quickly, Vice Health Minister Zhu Qingsheng vowed at a meeting of Asian health ministers in Malaysia yesterday. "We are prepared," Zhu said. "We are confident that SARS will not spread like it did in the past." The Health Ministry said on Thursday it had issued an emergency notice ordering a nationwide effort to prevent SARS. Local authorities were told to resume filing daily status reports on the disease, even if they have no cases. The government said it would disinfect public buildings and take the temperatures of travellers at all ports of entry. "Anyone who has a temperature over 38 degrees Celsius will be taken to the hospital," said a ministry statement published in newspapers. "No one will be exempt." In Hong Kong, health workers were deployed at the airport and at a railway station to check the temperatures of passengers arriving from the mainland. Meanwhile, China's Health Ministry said 117 people were quarantined in Anhui and one person was suffering from fever. In Beijing, 188 people were quarantined and five reportedly had fevers. At Ditan Hospital, a Beijing facility specialising in communicable diseases, 52 patients were relocated to make room for possible cases, said Fan Yinglong, an official from the city government. "This is a preventive measure taken by the hospital based on the city's contingency plan," Fan said.