china confirms two more sars cases

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China confirms two more SARS cases

By STEPHANIE HOO
The Associated Press
4/29/2004, 2:19 p.m. ET


BEIJING (AP) — As China confirmed two more SARS cases Thursday, the World Health Organization called for reducing the number of virus samples around the globe to prevent laboratory infections like the one apparently responsible for China's latest outbreak.


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The mother and aunt of an infected nurse are the latest confirmed SARS cases, the Ministry of Health said. They previously were listed as suspected cases and already were being quarantined before Thursday's announcement, which brought China's number of cases in the mini-outbreak to four confirmed and five suspected.

Quarantines continued for about 1,000 people who came into contact with the confirmed SARS cases, official media said.

In Taiwan, meanwhile, a 78-year-old man was quarantined and being tested for SARS after returning from a trip to mainland China and developing a high fever and other flu-like symptoms. Initial tests were negative for SARS.

Even as the number of cases increased, the WHO emphasized that the cases on China's mainland appeared to be contained to people linked to Beijing's Institute of Virology, a national laboratory, and, therefore, did not constitute a threat to public health.

But the agency wants to find out how two lab workers became ill and evidently passed SARS to others who came in close contact with them.

"We are urging the government ... to review biosafety practices in all laboratories within China, and we would urge other countries to do that as well," Dr. Julie Hall, WHO's SARS team leader in Beijing, told reporters Thursday.

The number of SARS samples around the world and the number of laboratories holding SARS samples need to be reduced, Hall said.

"They all need to be in safe storage and only essential research should be undertaken on them by well-trained staff in well-equipped laboratories," she said.

A WHO medical team plans to visit the Institute of Virology and determine whether procedures there contributed to the reappearance of severe acute respiratory syndrome, China's government said.

It wants to stem both the disease and public panic to prevent a recurrence of last year's events, when SARS killed 349 people in China after emerging from the southern province of Guangdong. Worldwide, the disease killed 774 people and sickened thousands more.

Tracking the current cases is especially urgent because China's weeklong May Day vacation begins Saturday. Millions of people will travel around the country, and any SARS carriers could infect people over a wide area.

During the initial SARS outbreak last year, China's government sharply restricted all travel and essentially canceled the May Day holiday. But on Thursday, no surgical masks — common last year as a SARS precaution — were seen on travelers at Beijing's main railway station.

"This time there's nothing to worry about. They already found the source of the infections," said Dong Ming, traveling home to Shandong province for the holiday.

Another man bound for a vacation in the southern city of Hanzhou — identifying himself only by his family name, Wang — said, "Everything is safe. Everything is disinfected. We learned last year how to prevent SARS."