CHINA: The Chinese government is urging people not to travel throughout the country as concerns about the spread of SARS have intensified. In particular, the government has warned people not to visit the countryside during the three-day May holiday, and students whose universities are being closed for at least a month are being told to stay on campus.
This follows new fears that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) will spread quickly from a few major cities into rural areas where the underfunded health system will not be able to cope.
Health ministers from states in south-east Asia, meanwhile, said they would gather in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday for crisis talks to combat the spread of the virus ahead of a full summit of regional leaders in Bangkok on April 29th.
The virus thought to cause SARS is constantly changing form, Chinese scientists warned yesterday, which will make developing a vaccine difficult. The Beijing Genomics Institute reported that the virus is "expected to mutate very fast and very easily".
"If you do not have the resources to deal with SARS, I think we're going for a very big outbreak in China," warned Mr Henk Bekedam, the WHO representative in China.
"I think it will be quite a challenge to contain SARS within China, especially those provinces which have very limited resources," he said yesterday. "We hope that the provinces will be ready. Otherwise you might have in all the provinces at least 100 cases, and then you can make up the arithmetic."
Health News, published by the health ministry, said the government would put 900 million yuan (€100 million) into SARS prevention in China's poorer western regions.
China has realised the weakness of its public health system and decided to build a national fast-acting mechanism to deal with public health emergencies, Premier Wen Jiabao said in Beijing. He promised to improve its co-operation with other regions, countries and international organisations.
The government has dispatched teams around the country to reveal the full extent of the growing epidemic.
WHO experts are now in Shanghai, where the city has so far stuck to reporting just two confirmed cases and nine suspected, figures which are widely disbelieved.
Restaurants and shops across the city are empty while squads of sanitary workers are spraying public places, including lifts and bank counters, with disinfectant.
Fantastic rumours are spreading through the country, one blaming foreign dogs for spreading the disease, another claiming that wearing garlic prevents infection.
Hong Kong still has the highest number of SARS deaths in the world.
Even so, nearly half the world's cases are in China, where SARS first appeared in the southern province of Guangdong back in November.
The health department in Hong Kong announced five more deaths and 32 new cases, bringing the death toll in the territory to 99 and the number of cases to 1,434.
Both Malaysia and the Philippines also reported suspected new deaths from SARS, which has killed more than 230 and infected some 4,000 worldwide since it first emerged in southern China in November.